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it 

FRANKLIN 

BEFORE THE PRIVY COUNCIL, 

WHITE HALL CHAPEL, LONDON, 1774, 



ON BEHALF OP THE 



PROVINCE OE MASSACHUSETTS, 



TO ADVOCATE THE REMOVAL OF HUTCHINSON AND OLIVER. 



PHILADELPHIA : 
PUBLISHED BY JOHN M. BUTLER, 

242 CHESTNUT STREET. 

1859. 



£ 



9- 1 



Entered aooordlng to tlie Act of Oongreaq, iu the year 1S59, by 

JOHN M. BUTLER, 

in tho Clerk's Office of tlto District Court for the Eastern District of ronnsylvanla. 



STEREOTTPED BT 

.TESTER HARDING & SON, 

INQUIRER BUILDIXQ, SOUTH TMRP STREET, rUILAPELPniA. 



INTRODUCTION. 



FRANKLIN BEFORE THE LORDS IN COUNCIL. 

IN RELATION TO THE HUTCHINSON AND OLIVER CORRESPONDENCE. 

In Bancroft's history of the United States we have a graphic de- 
scription of this striking scene, arising from one of the most im- 
portant of Franklin's official transactions with his country; and 
which greatly accelerated the course of events resulting in the inde- 
pendence of the Colonies. 

In 1773, Franklin was residing in London as commissioner for the 
Colonies of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, and also of New Jersey 
and Georgia ; coming to the knowledge of certain letters written by 
Governor Hutchinson and Lieutenant Governor Oliver, of the 
province of Massachusetts, to persons in power and office in England, 
calling for suppressive measures, and advising action detrimental to 
the interest of the colonies ; and subsequently obtaining possession of 
the letters, he transmitted copies of them to the Speaker of the As- 
sembly of Massachusetts ; at the same time calling attention to the 
insidious character of the documents, and the unfaithful character 
of their public officers. The perusal of these letters excited the 
greatest indignation. The House of Representatives respectfully 
petitioned his Majesty for the removal of the Governor and Lieutenant 
Governor; charging them with betraying their trust, and the people 
they governed; and with giving private, partial, and false information 
to those in power. They also declared them enemies to the colonies, 
and prayed for their speedy removal from office. 

It was upon this question that Franklin came before the Council, 
assisted by John Dunning and John Lee, to advocate the removal of 
Hutchinson and Oliver. It was the general opinion in America, that 

(hi) 



IV INTRODUCTION. 

Hutchinson ought to he superseded. Wedderburn, the Solicitor 
General, who appeared in behalf of Hutchinson and Oliver, changed 
the issue as if Franklin were on trial; and in a speech, replete with 
falsehood and invective, charged him with the vilest conduct in ob- 
taining and using the letters. This infamous speech was received 
with cheers and laughter by the Lords in council, who regarded it as 
a triumph over the venerable Franklin and the cause he advocated. 
It is the narrative of this extraordinary scene that forms the chapter 
in Bancroft's history, entitled "The King in Council insults the great 
American Plebeian." 

An event having so direct an influence on the future of the country, 
aud which may be said to have fully awakened the spirit of liberty, 
cannot fail to be appreciated at the present time. In the splendid 
engraving of this subject which this volume accompanies, the histo- 
rical importance and truthfulness of the event, together with the in- 
trinsic qualities of the work, — having been produced by a combination 
of talent never before employed on any similar publication, — must 
commend it as a work of great value to the American public. 

This magnificent picture is one of the largest ever published in 
the country. It is engraved on steel ; and beautifully finished in a 
superb style of line and stipple; — mezzotinto being entirely rejected. 
It is forty inches by twenty-seven in size, and contains over sixty 
figures ; comprising the members of the Council, and a number of the 
most distinguished characters of the day. Among the most con- 
spicuous are Edmund Burke, Dr. Priestley, and Jeremy Bentham, and 
other personal friends of Frauklin, who were at his side during the 
trying scene. 

The portraits of the members of the Council, and the distinguished 
persons present are perfectly reliable. Many of them have never be- 
fore been published ; and were obtained especially for this work 
from drawings and paintings remaining in the possession of their 
families. Several years were devoted to procuring them, through the 
exertions of competent agents in London, and at an expense greater 
than is usually incurred for the full completion of meretricious en- 
gravings, which are frequently published in this country as works of 
art. The interior of the hall, with its furniture and decorations, is 
perfectly accurate in all its details. 

The engraving is from a magnificent painting in oil, by C. Sehuessole, 
of Philadelphia, seven feet by five in size, which, for masterly 
grouping, splendid arrangement of effect and color, and perfect accu- 
racy of portraiture and costume, is universally conceded to be one 



INTRODUCTION. V 

of the finest national pictures in the country; and has excited the 
greatest attention wherever exhibited. 

The entire work has been over eight years in preparation, and the 
best talent in the country employed in every department, that its 
intrinsic qualities as a work of art may be commensurate with its 
national and historical importance. It is confidently hoped that its 
publication will inaugurate an era in American art, when the efforts 
of our native artists will be produced in a style to meet the growing 
taste and refinement of the people, and vie with the best productions 
of the European masters. 

The volume which accompanies the engraving is published exclu- 
sively for subscribers. It contains the splendid chapter from Ban- 
croft's History of the United States descriptive of the event forming 
the subject of the picture ; and the entire correspondence of Hutch- 
inson and Oliver. The correspondence is from a volume which is now 
entirely out of print; and so extremely rare that it is difficult to find 
even in the largest and most complete libraries in the country. It is in 
itself an important historical work, and a valuable addition to the 
picture. 

The Engraving and Book can only be obtained by subscription ; 
and through the authorized agents of the publisher. In no event 
will it be on sale at the print or book stores. 



CONTENTS. 



The King in Council insults the great American 

Plebeian, ...... 3 

Letters op Hutchinson and Oliver, . . .17 

Remarks in Defence of the Foregoing Letters, . 52 

Proceedings on the Address of the Assembly of Mas- 
sachusetts Bay, . . . . .67 

The Speech of the Right Honorable the Earl of 

Chatham, &c, ..... 122 

(D 



THE KING IN COUNCIL INSULTS THE GREAT AMERICAN PLEBEIAN. 

The just man covered with the opprobrium of crime 
and meriting all the honors of virtue, is the sublimest 
spectacle that can appear on earth. Against Franklin 
were arrayed the Court, the Ministry, the Parliament, 
and an all-pervading social influence; but he only assumed 
a firmer demeanor and a loftier tone. On delivering to 
Lord Dartmouth the Address to the King for the removal 
of Hutchinson and Oliver, he gave assurances, that the 
people of Massachusetts aimed at no novelties; that, 
" having lately discovered the authors of their grievances 
to be some of their own people, their resentment against 
Britain was thence much abated." The Secretary pro- 
mised at once to lay the Petition before the King, and 
expressed his " pleasure" at the communication, as well 
as his " earnest hope" for the restoration " of the most 
perfect tranquillity and happiness." It had been the un- 
questionable duty of the Agent of the Province to com- 
municate proof that Hutchinson and Oliver were conspir- 
ing against its Constitution; to bring censure on the act, 
it was necessary to raise a belief that the evidence had 
been surreptitiously obtained. To that end Hutchinson 
was unwearied in his entreaties ; but William Whately, 
the Banker, who was his brother's executor, was per- 



4 THE KING INSULTS THE GREAT AMERICAN PLEBEIAN. 

Buaded that the letters in question had never been in his 
hands, and refused io cast imputations on any one. 

The newspaper Press was therefore employed to spread 
a rumor that they had been dishonestly obtained through 
John Temple. The anon vinous calumny which was at- 
tributed to Bernard, Knox, and Mauduit. was denied by 
one calling himself "a Member of Parliament," who also 
truly affirmed) that the letters which were sent to Boston 
had never been in the executor's hands. Again the Press 
declared, what was also true, that Whately, the executor, 
had submitted files of his brother's letters to Temple's 
examination, who. it was insinuated, had seized the op- 
portunity to purloin them. Temple repelled the charge 
instantly and successfully. Whately. the executor, never 
made a suggestion that the letters had been taken away 
by Temple, and always believed the contrary ; but swayed 
not so much by the solicitations of Hutchinson and Mau- 
duit, as by his sudden appointment as a banker to the 
Treasury, he published an evasive card, in which he did 
not relieve Temple from the implication. 

A duel followed between Temple and Whately. without 
witnesses ; then newspaper altercations on the incidents 
of the meeting ; till another duel seemed likely to ensue. 
Gushing, the timid Speaker of the Massachusetts Assem- 
bly, to whom the letters had been Officially transmitted, 
begged that he might not be known as having received 
them, lest it should be "a damage" to him; the Member 
of Parliament, who had had them in his possession, never 
permitted himself to be named : Temple, who risked 
offices producing a thousand pounds a year, publicly de- 
nied u any concern in procuring or transmitting them." 
To prevent bloodshed. Franklin assumed the undivided 



THE KING INSULTS THE GREAT AMERICAN PLEBEIAN. b 

responsibility, from which every one else was disposed to 
shrink. " I," said he, " I alone am the person who ob- 
tained and transmitted to Boston the letters in question." 
His ingenuousness exposed him to " unmerited abuse" in 
every company and in every newspaper, and gave his 
enemies an opening to reject publicly the Petition; which 
otherwise would have been dismissed without parade. 

On Tuesday the eleventh of January, Franklin for 
Massachusetts, and Mauduit, with Wedderburn, for Hutch- 
inson and Oliver, appeared before the Privy Council. "I 
thought," said Franklin, " that this had been a matter of 
politics, and not of law, and have not brought any coun- 
sel." The hearing was, therefore, adjourned to Saturday 
the twenty-ninth. Meantime the Ministiy and the cour- 
tiers expressed their rage against him ; and talked of his 
dismissal from office, of his arrest, and imprisonment at 
Newgate ; of a search among his papers for proofs of 
Treason ; while Wedderburn openly professed the inten- 
tion to inveigh personally against him. He was also 
harassed with a subpoena from the Chancellor, to attend 
his Court at the suit of William Whately, respecting the 
letters. 

The public sentiment was, moreover, embittered by 
accounts that the Americans would not suffer the landing 
of the tea. The zeal of the Colonists was unabated. 
On New Year's eve, a half chest of tea, picked up in 
Roxbury, was burned on Boston Common ; on the twen- 
tieth, three barrels of Bohea tea were burned in State 
Street. On the twenty-fifth, John Malcolm, a North 
Briton, who had been aid to Gov. Tryon in his war against 
the Regulators, and was now a preventive officer in the 
Customs, having indiscreetly provoked the populace, was 



THE KING INSULTS THE GREAT AMERICAN PLEBEIAN, 

seized, tarred and feathered, and paraded under the gal- 
lows. 

The General Court also assembled, full of a determina- 
tion to compel the Judges to refuse the salaries proffered 
by the King. Enough of the prevalence of this spirit 
was known in England, to raise a greater clamor against 
the Americans, than had ever before existed. Hypocrites, 
traitors, rebels, and villains, were the softest epithets ap- 
plied io them; and some menaced war. and would have 
given full scope to sanguinary rancor. On the twenty- 
seventh, the Government received official information, 
that the people of Boston had thrown the tea overboard, 
and this event swelled the anger against the Americans. 

In this state of public feeling, Franklin, on the twenty- 
ninth, assisted by Dunning and John Lee, came before 
the Privy Council, to advocate the removal of Hutchin- 
son and Oliver, in whose behalf appeared Israel Mauduit, 
the old adviser of the Stamp Tax ; and Wedderburn, 
the Solicitor General. It was a day o( great expectation. 
Thirty-live Lords of the Council were present ; a larger 
number than had ever attended a hearing ; and the room 
was filled with a crowded audience, among whom were 
Priestley, Jeremy Bentham, and Edmund Burke. 

The Petition and accompanying papers having been 
read. Dunning asked on the part of his clients the reason 
of his being ordered to attend. " No cause," said he, 
" is instituted ; nor do we think advocates necessary J 
nor are they demanded on the part of the Colony. The 
Petition is not in the nature of accusation, but of advice 
and request It is an Address to the King's wisdom, not 
an application for criminal justice j when referred to the 
Council, it is a matter for political prudence, not lor judi- 



THE KING INSULTS THE GREAT AMERICAN PLEBEIAN. 7 

cial determination. The matter, therefore, rests wholly 
in your Lordship's opinion of the propriety or impro- 
priety of continuing persons in authority, who are repre- 
sented by legal bodies, competent to such representation, 
as having (whether on sufficient or insufficient grounds) 
entirely forfeited the confidence of the Assemblies whom 
they were to act with, and of the people whom they were 
to govern. The resolutions on which that representation 
is founded, lie before your Lordships, together with the 
letters from which they arose. 

" If your Lordships should think that these actions, 
which appear to the Colony Representative to be faulty, 
ought in other places to appear meritorious, the Petition 
has not desired that the parties should be punished as 
criminals for these actions of supposed merit ; nor even 
that they may not be rewarded. It only requests that 
these gentlemen may be removed to places where such 
merits are better understood, and such rewards may be 
more approved." He spoke well, and was seconded by 
Lee. 

The question as presented by Dunning, was already 
decided in favor of the Petitioners; it was the universal 
opinion that Hutchinson ought to be superseded. Wed- 
derburn changed the issue, as if Franklin were on trial ; 
and in a speech which was a continued tissue of falsehood 
and ribaldry, turned his invective against the Petitioners 
and their Messenger. Of all men, Franklin was the most 
important in any attempt at conciliation. He was the 
Agent of the two great Colonies of Massachusetts and 
Pennsylvania, and also of New Jersey and Georgia ; was 
the friend of Edmund Burke, who was agent for New 
York. All the troubles in British colonial policy had 



O THE KING INSULTS THE GREAT AMERICAN PLEBEIAN. 

grown out of the neglect of his advice, and there was no 
one who could have mediated like him between the Me- 
tropolis and the Americans. He was now thrice vene- 
rable, from genius, fame in the world of science, and age, 
being already nearly threescore years and ten. This ln.in 
Wedderburn, turning from the real question, employed all 
the cunning powers of distortion and misrepresentation 
to abuse. With an absurdity of application which the 
Lords of the Privy Council were too much prejudiced to 
observe, he drew a parallel between Boston and Capri. 
Hutchinson and Sejanus, the humble Petition of the Mas- 
sachusetts Assembly, and a verbose and grand epistle of 
the Emperor Tiberius. Franklin, whose character was 
most benign, and who, from obvious motives of mercy, 
had assumed the sole responsibility of obtaining the let- 
ters, he described as a person of the most deliberate 
malevolence, realizing in life what poetic fiction only had 
penned for the breast of a bloody African. The speech 
of Hutchinson, challenging a discussion of the Supremacy 
of Parliament, had been not only condemned by public 
opinion in England, but disapproved by the Secretary of 
Stale; Wedderburn pronounced it u a masterly one," 
which had " stunned the faction." Franklin, for twenty 
3'ears had exerted his wonderful powers as the great con- 
ciliator, had never once employed the American press to 
alarm the American people, but had sought to prevent 
the Parliamentary taxation of America, by private and 
successful remonstrance during the time of the Pelhams ; 
by seasonable remonstrance with Grenville against the 
Stamp Act; by honest and true answers to the inquiries 
of the House of Commons ; by the best of advice to 
Shelburne. When s} r cophants sought by tlattery to mis- 



THE KING INSULTS THE GREAT AMERICAN PLEBEIAN. U 

lead the Minister for America, he had given correct in- 
formation and safe counsel to the Ministry of Grafton, 
and repeated it emphatically, and in writing, to the Min- 
istry of North j but Wedderburn stigmatized this wise 
and hearty lover of both countries as "a true incen- 
diary." The letters which had been written by public 
men, in public offices, on public affairs, to one who formed 
an integral part of the body that had been declared to 
possess absolute power over America, and which had 
been written for the purpose of producing a tyrannical 
exercise of that absolute power, he called private. Hutch- 
inson had solicited the place held by Franklin, from which 
Franklin was to be dismissed ; this fact was suppressed, 
and the wanton falsehood substituted, that Franklin had 
desired the Governor's office, and had basely planned 
" his rival's overthrow." Franklin had inclosed the let- 
ters officially to the Speaker of the Massachusetts As- 
sembly, without a single injunction of secrecy with re- 
gard to the sender; Wedderburn maintained that they 
were sent anonymously and secretly ; and by an argu- 
ment founded on a mis-statement, but which he put for- 
ward as irrefragable, he pretended to convict Franklin of 
having obtained the letters by fraudulent and corrupt 
means, or of having stolen them from the person who 
stole them. 

The Lords of Council as he spoke, cheered him on by 
their laughter ; and the cry of " Hear him, hear him," 
burst repeatedly from a body which professed to be sit- 
ting in judgment as the highest Court of Appeal for the 
Colonies, and yet encouraged the advocate of one of the 
parties to insult a public envoy, present only as the per- 
son delivering the Petition of a great and loyal Colony. 



10 THE KING INSULTS THE GREAT AMERICAN PLEBEIAN. 

Meantime the gray-haired Franklin, whom Kant, the 
noblest philosopher of that age, had called the modern 
Prometheus, stood conspicuously erect, confronting his 
vilificr and the Privy Council, compelled to listen while 
calumny, in the service of lawless force, aimed a death- 
blow at his honor, and his virtues called on God and man 
to see how unjustly he suffered. 

The reply of Dunning, who was very ill and was fa- 
tigued by standing so long, could scarcely be heard ; and 
that of Lee produced no impression. There was but one 
place in England where fit reparation could be made ; and 
there was but one man who had the eloquence and the 
courage and the weight of character to effect the atone- 
ment. For the present, Franklin must rely on the ap- 
proval of the monitor within his own breast. " I have 
never been so sensible of the power of a good conscience," 
said he to Priestly ; " for if I had not considered the 
thing for which I have been so much insulted, as one of 
the best actions of my life, and what I should certainly 
do again in the same circumstances, I could not have sup- 
ported it." But it was not to him, it was to the people 
of Massachusetts, and to New England, and to all Amer- 
ica, that the insult was offered through their Agent. 

Franklin and Wedderburn parted ; the one to spread 
the celestial fire of freedom among men; to make his 
name a cherished household word in every nation of 
Europe ; and in the beautiful language of Washington, 
"to be venerated for benevolence, to be admired for talents, 
to be esteemed for patriotism, to be beloved for philan- 
thropy ;" the other childless, though twice wedded, un- 
beloved, wrangling with the patron who had impeached 
his veracity, busy only in " getting every thing he could" 



THE KING INSULTS THE GREAT AMERICAN PLEBEIAN. 11 

in the way of titles and riches, as the wages of corruption. 
Franklin, when he died, had nations for his mourners, and 
the great and the good throughout the world as his eulo- 
gists ; when Wedderburn died, there was no man to 
mourn ; no senate spoke his praise ; no poet embalmed 
his memory ; and his King, hearing that he was certainly 
dead, said only, " He has not left a greater knave behind 
him in my dominions." The report of the Lords, which 
had been prepared beforehand, was immediately signed ; 
and " they went away, almost ready to throw up their 
hats for joy, as if by the vehement Philippic against the 
hoary-headed Franklin, they had obtained a triumph." 

And who were the Lords of the Council, that thus 
thought to mark and brand the noblest representative of 
free labor who for many a year had earned his daily bread 
as apprentice, journeyman, or mechanic, and "knew the 
heart of the working man," and felt for the people, of 
whom he remained one ? If they who upon that occa- 
sion pretended to sit in judgment had never come into 
being, whom among them all would humanity have 
missed ? But how would it have suffered if Franklin 
had not lived ! 

The men in power who on that day sought to rob 
Franklin of his good name, wounded him on the next 
in his fortunes, by turning him out of his place in the 
British American Post Office. That institution had 
yielded no revenue till he organized it, and yielded none 
after his dismissal. 

On Tuesday, the first of February, the Earl of Buck- 
inghamshire, who had attended the Privy Council, went 
to the House of Lords, " to put the Ministry in mind 
that he was to be bought by private contract." Moving 



12 THE IHQ INSULTS THE GREAT AMERICAN PLEBEIAN. 

for the Boston Correspondence, he said, " The question is 
no longer about the liberty of North America, but whether 
we are to be free or slaves to our Colonies. Franklin is 
here, not as the Agent of a Province, but as an Ambas- 
sador from the States of America. His embassy to us is 
like nothing but that sent by Louis XIV. to the Republic 
of Genoa, commanding the doge to come and appease the 
Grand Monarch, by prostrating himself at Versailles." 
'• Such language is wild," replied the Earl of Stair. 
u Humanity, commercial policy, and the public necessities 
dictate a very contrary one." " I would not throw cold 
water on the noble Lord's zeal," said the good Lord Dart- 
mouth ; as he made the request that further despatches 
might be waited for. 

Superior to injury, Franklin, or, as Rockingham called 
him. the " magnanimous" " old man," still sought for con- 
ciliation, and seizing the moment when he was sure of all 
sympathies, he wrote to his constituents to begin the 
work, by making compensation to the East India Com- 
pany before any compulsive measures were thought of. 
But events were to proceed as they had been ordered. 
Various measures were talked of for altering the Consti- 
tution of the Government in Massachusetts, and for prose- 
cuting individuals. The opinion in town was very general 
that America would submit ; that Government was taken 
by surprise when they repealed the Stamp Act, and that 
all might be recovered. 

The King was obstinate, had no one near him to ex- 
plain the true state of things in America, and admitted 
no misgivings except for not having sooner enforced the 
claims oi' authority. On the fourth day of February, he 
consulted the American Commander-in-Chief, who had re- 



THE KING INSULTS THE GREAT AMERICAN PLEBEIAN. 13 

cently returned from New York. " I am willing to go 
back at a day's notice," said Gage, " if coercive measures 
are adopted. They will be lions, while we are lambs ; 
but if we take the resolute part, they will undoubtedly 
prove very meek. Four regiments sent to Boston will 
be sufficient to prevent any disturbance." The King re- 
ceived these opinions as certainly true ; and wished their 
adoption. He would enforce the claim of authority at all 
hazards. " All men," said he, " now feel, that the fatal 
compliance in 1766 has increased the pretensions of the 
Americans to absolute independence." In the letters of 
Hutchinson, he saw nothing to which the least exception 
could be taken ; and condemned the Address of Massa- 
chusetts, of which every word was true, as the production 
of " falsehood and malevolence." 

Accordingly, on the seventh day of February, in the 
Court at St. James's, the report of the Privy Council was 
read, embodying the vile insinuations of Wedderburn; 
and the Petition which Franklin had presented, and which 
expressed the exact truth, was described as formed on 
false allegations, and was dismissed by the King as 
" groundless, vexatious, and scandalous." — Bancroft's His- 
tory of the United States. 



THE LETTERS OF 

GOVERNOR HUTCHINSON AND LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR OLIVER. 
WITH THE ASSEMBLY'S ADDRESS, 

AND THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE LORDS' COMMITTEE OF COUNCIL; 
WITH THE SPEECH OF MR. WEDDERBURN, 

RELATING TO THOSE LETTERS; 
AND THE REPORT OF THE LORDS' COMMITTEE 

TO HIS MAJESTY IN COUNCIL; 

AND THE SPEECH OP THE 

EARL OF CHATHAM ON AMERICAN AFFAIRS. 



LONDON : 
PRINTED FOR J. WILKIE, 

AT 71 IN ST. TAUL'S CHURCH-YARD, 1774. 

PHILADELPHIA : 
REPRINTED BY JOHN M. BUTLER, 

242 CHESTNUT STREET. 

1859. 

(15) 



LETTERS, &C. 



Boston, June 18, 1768. 

Sir: — As you allow me the honor of your correspon- 
dence, I may not omit acquainting you with so remark- 
able an event as the withdraw of the Commissioners of 
the Customs, and most of the other officers under them, 
from the town on board the Romney, with an intent to 
remove from thence to the castle. 

In the evening of the 10th, a sloop belonging to Mr. 
Hancock, a Representative for Boston, and a wealthy 
merchant of great influence over the populace, was seized 
by the Collector and Comptroller for a very notorious 
breach of the acts of trade, and, after seizure, taken into 
custody by the officer of the Romney man-of-war, and 
removed under command of her guns. It is pretended 
that the removal, and not the seizure, incensed the people. 
It seems not very material which it was. A mob was 
immediately raised, the officers insulted, bruised, and 
much hurt, and the windows of some of their houses 
broke ; a boat belonging to the Collector burnt in triumph, 
and many threats uttered against the Commissioners and 
their officers : no notice being taken -of their extravagance 
in the time of it, nor airy endeavors by any authority, 

3 (17) 



18 LETTERS; &C. 

except the Governor, the next day, to discover and punish 
the offenders; and there being a rumor of a higher mob 
intended Monday (the 13th) in the evening, the Commis- 
sioners, four oi' them, thought themselves altogether un- 
safe, being destitute of protection, and removed with their 
families to the Romney, and there remain and hold their 
board, and next week intend to do the same, and also 
open the custom house at the castle. The Governor 
pressed the council to assist him with their advice, but 
they declined and evaded, calling it a brush, or small dis- 
turbance by hoys and negroes, not considering how much 
it must be resented in England that the officers of the 
crown should think themselves obliged to quit the place 
of their residence, and go on hoard a King's ship for 
safety, and all the internal authority of the province take 
no notice of it. The town of Boston have had repeated 
meetings, and by their votes declared the Commissioners 
and their officers a great grievance, and yesterday in- 
structed their Representatives to endeavor, that enquiry 
should be made by the Assembly whether any person by 
writing or in any other way, had encouraged the sending 
troops here, there being some alarming reports that troops 
are expected, but have not taken any measures to dis- 
countenance the promoters of the late proceedings ; but, 
on the contrary, appointed one or more of the actors or 
abettors on a committee appointed to wait on the Go- 
vernor, and to desire him to order the man-of-war out of 
the harbor. 

Ignorant as they be, yet the heads of a Boston town- 
meeting influence all public measures. 

It is not possible this anarchy should last always. Mr. 
Hallowell, who will be the bearer of this, tells me he has 



LETTERS, &C. 19 

the honor of being personally known to you. I beg leave 
to refer you to him for a more full account. 
I am, with great esteem, Sir, 

Your most humble and obedient servant, 

Tho. Hutchinson. 



Boston, August, 1768. 

Sir : — It is very necessary other information should 
be had in England of the present state of the commission- 
ers of the customs than what common fame will bring to 
you, or what you will receive from most of the letters 
which go from hence, people in general being prejudiced 
by many false reports and misrepresentations concerning 
them. Seven-eighths of the people of the country sup- 
pose the board itself to be unconstitutional, and cannot 
be undeceived and brought to believe that a board has 
existed in England all this century, and that the board 
established here has no new powers given to it. Our in- 
cendiaries know it, but they industriously and very wick- 
edly publish the contrary. As much pains have been 
taken to prejudice the country against the persons of the 
Commissioners, and their characters have been misrepre- 
sented and cruelly treated, especially since their confine- 
ment at the castle, where they are not so likely to hear 
what is said of them, and are not so able to confute it. 

It is now pretended they need not to have withdrawn, 
that Mr. Williams had stood his ground without any in- 
jury, although the mob beset his house, &c. There 
never was that spirit raised against the under officers as 
against the Commissioners, I mean four of them. They 
had a public affront offered them by the town of Boston, 



20 LETTERS, &C. 

who refused to give the use of their hall for a public din- 
ner, unless it was stipulated that the Commissioners 
should not be invited. An affront of the same nature at 
the motion of Mr. Hancock was offered by a company of 
cadets. Soon after a vessel of Mr. Hancock's being 
seized, the officers were mobbed, and the Commissioners 
were informed they were threatened. I own I was in 
pain for them. I do not believe if the mob had seized 
them, there was any authority able and willing to have 
rescued them. After they had withdrawn, the town sig- 
nified to the Governor by a message that it was expected 
or desired they should not return. It was then the 
general voice that it would not be safe for them to return. 
After all this, the sons of liberty say they deserted or 
abdicated. 

The other officers of the customs in general either did 
not leave the town, or soon returned to it. Some of them 
seem to be discontented with the Commissioners. Great 
pains have been taken to increase the discontent. Their 
office by these means is rendered extremely burdensome. 
Every thing they do is found fault with, and yet no par- 
ticular illegality or even irregularity mentioned. There 
is too much hauteur, some of their officers say, in the 
treatment they receive. They say, they treat their offi- 
cers as the Commissioners treat their officers in England, 
and require no greater deference. After all, it is not the 
persons, but the office of the Commissioners which has 
raised this spirit, and the distinction made between the 
Commissioners, is because it has been given out that four 
of them were in favor of the new establishment, and the 
fifth was not. If Mr. Hallowell arrived safe, he can in- 



LETTERS, &C. 21 

form you many circumstances relative to this distinction, 
which I very willingly excuse myself from mention- 
ing. 

I know of no burden brought upon the fair trader by 
the new establishment. The illicit trader finds the risk 
greater than it used to be, especially in the port where 
the board is constantly held. Another circumstance 
which increases the prejudice is this ; the new duties 
happened to take place just about the time the Commis- 
sioners arrived. People have absurdly connected the 
duties and Board of Commissioners, and suppose we 
should have had no additional duties, if there had been 
no Board to have the charge of collecting them. With 
all the aid you can give to the officers of the crown, they 
will have enough to do to maintain the authority of 
government, and to carry the laws into execution. If 
they are discountenanced, neglected, or fail of support 
from you, they must submit to every thing the present 
opposers of government think fit to require of them. 

There is no office under greater discouragements than 
that of the Commissioners. Some of my friends recom- 
mended me to the ministr}^ I think myself very happy 
that I am not one. Indeed it would have been incom- 
patible with my post as chief justice, and I must have 
declined it. and I should do it, although no greater salary 
had been affixed to the chief justice's place, than the 
small pittance allowed by the province. 

From my acquaintance with the Commissioners I have 
conceived a personal esteem for them, but my chief in- 
ducement to make this representation to you, is a regard 



22 LETTERS, &C. 

to the public interest, which I am sure will suffer if the 
opposition carry their point against them, 
lam, with very great esteem, Sir, 

Your most obedient humble servant, 

Tho. Hutchinson. 

August 10. Yesterday at a meeting of the merchants, 
it was agreed by all present to give no more orders for 
goods from England, nor receive any on commission until 
the late acts are repealed. And it is said all except six- 
teen in the town have subscribed an engagement to that 
tenor. I hope the subscription will be printed, that I 
may transmit it to you. 



Boston, October 4, 1768. 
Dear Sir : — I was absent upon one of our circuits when 
Mr. B} r les arrived. Since my return, I have received 
from him your obliging letter of 31st July. I never 
dared to think what the resentment of the nation would 
be upon Hallowell's arrival. It is not strange that mea- 
sures should be immediately taken to reduce the colonies 
to their former state of government and order, but that 
the national funds should be affected by it, is to me a 
little mysterious and surprising. Principles of govern- 
ment absurd enough spread through all the colonies ; but 
I cannot think that in any colony, people of any consid- 
eration have ever been so mad as to think of a revolt. 
Many of the common people have been in a frenzy, and 
talked of dying in defence of their liberties, and have 
spoke and printed what is highly criminal, and too many 
of rank above the vulgar, and some in public posts have 



LETTERS, &C. 23 

countenanced and encouraged them, until they increased 
so much in their numbers, and in their opinion of their 
importance, as to submit to government no further than 
they thought proper. The legislative powers have been 
influenced by them, and the executive powers entirely 
lost their force. There has been continual danger of mobs 
and insurrections, but they would have spent all their 
force within ourselves, the officers of the crown, and some 
of the few friends who dared to stand by them, possibly 
might have been knocked on the head, and some such 
fatal event would probably have brought the people to 
their senses. For four or five weeks past the distemper 
has been growing, and I confess I have not been without 
some apprehensions for myself, but my friends have had 
more for me; and I have heard repeated and frequent 
notices from them from different quarters, one of the last 
I will inclose to you.* In this state of things, there was 
no security, but quitting my posts, which nothing but the 
last extremity would justify. As Chief Justice, for two 
years after our first disorders, I kept the grand juries 
tolerably well to their duty. The last spring, there had 
been several riots, and a most infamous libel had been 
published in one of the papers, which I enlarged upon, 
and the grand jury had determined to make presentments, 
but the Attorney-General not attending them the first 
day, Otis and his creatures, who were alarmed and fright- 
ened, exerted themselves the next day, and prevailed 
upon so many of the jury to change their voices, that 
there was not a sufficient number left to find a bill. 
They have been ever since more enraged against me than 
ever. At the desire of the Governor I committed to wri- 

* See the following Letter. 



21 LETTERS, &C. 

ting the charge while it lay in my memory, and as I have 
no further use for it, I will inclose it, as it may give you 
some idea of our judicatories. 

Whilst we were in this state, news came of two regi- 
ments being ordered from Halifax, and soon after two 
more from Ireland. The minds of people were more and 
more agitated, broad hints were given that the troops 
should never land, a barrel of tar was placed upon the 
beacon, in the night to be fired, to bring in the country, 
when the troops appeared, and all the authority of the 
government was not strong enough to remove it. The 
town of Boston met and passed a number of weak, but 
very criminal votes ; and as the Governor declined calling 
an Assembl} r , they sent circular letters to all the towns 
and districts to send a person each that there might be a 
general consultation at so extraordinary a crisis. They 
moi and spent a week, made themselves ridiculous, and 
then dissolved themselves, after a message or two to the 
Governor, which he refused to receive ; a petition to the 
King, which I dare say their agent will never be allowed 
to present, and a result which thc} r published ill-natured 
and impotent. 

In this confusion the troops from Halifax arrived. I 
never was much afraid of the people's taking arms, but 
I was apprehensive of violence from the mob, it being 
their last chance before the troops could land. As the 
prospect of revenge became more certain, their courage 
abated in proportion. Two regiments are lauded, but a 
new grievance is now raised. The troops are by act of par- 
liament to be quartered no where else but in the barracks, 
until they are full. There are barracks enough at the 
castle to hold both regiments. It is therefore against the 



LETTERS, &C. 25 

Act to bring any of them into the town. This was 
started by the Council in their answer to the Governor, 
which, to make themselves popular, they in an unprece- 
dented way published and have alarmed all the province ; 
for although none but the most contracted minds could 
put such a construction upon the act, yet after this decla- 
ration of the Council, nine-tenths of the people suppose 
it just. I wish the act had been better expressed, but it 
is absurd to suppose the parliament intended to take from 
the King the direction of his forces, by confining them 
to a place where any of the colonies might think fit to 
build barracks. It is besides ungrateful, for it is known 
to many that this provision was brought into the bill after 
it had been framed without it, from mere favor to the 
colonies. I hear the Commander-in-Chief has provided 
barracks or quarters, but a doubt still remains with some 
of the Council, whether they are to furnish the articles 
required, unless the men are in the province barracks, and 
they are to determine upon it to-day. 

The government has been so long in the hands of the 
populace, that it must come out of them by degrees, at 
least it will be a work of time to bring the people back 
to just notions of the nature of government. 

Mr. Pepperrell, a young gentleman of good character, 
and grandson and principal heir to the late Sir William 
Pepperrell, being bound to London, I shall deliver this 
letter to him, as it will be too bulky for postage, and de- 
sire him to wait upon you with it. 

I am, with very great esteem, Sir, 

Your most humble and most obedient servant, 

Tiio. Hutchinson. 

4 



26 LETTERS, &C. 

Sir : — The great esteem I have for you in every point 
of light, perhaps renders 1113' fears and doubts for the 
safety of your person greater than they ought to be; 
however if that is an error, it certainly results from true 
friendship, naturally jealous. Last night, I was informed 
by a gentleman of my acquaintance, who had his infor- 
mation from one intimate with and knowing to the infer- 
nal purposes of the sons of liberty, as they falsely style 
themselves, that he verily believed, from the terrible 
threats and menaces by those Catilines against you, that 
your life is greatly in danger. This informant, I know, 
is under obligations to you, and is a man of veracity. He 
expressed himself with concern for you, and the gentle- 
man acquainting me with this horrid circumstance, assured 
ine he w:as very uneasy till } r ou had notice. I should 
have done myself the honor of waiting on you, but am 
necessarily prevented. The duty I owed to you as a 
friend, and to the public as a member of societ}', would 
not suffer me to rest tilli had put your honor upon 3'our 
guard ; for though this may be a false alarm, nothing 
would have given me greater pain, if any accident had 
happened, and I had been silent. If possible, I will see 
you to-morrow, and let you know further into this black 
affair. And am, with the sincerest friendship and re- 
spect, your Honor's 

Most obedient, and most humble servant, 

Rob. Auchmuty. 

To the lion ble Thomas Hutchinson, Sept. 14, 1768. 



Boston, Dec. 10, 1768. 
Dear Sir : — I am just now informed that a number of 



LETTERS, &C. 27 

the Council, perhaps eight or ten, who live in and near 
this town, have met together and agreed upon a long ad- 
dress or petition to Parliament, and that it will be sent 
by this ship to Mr. Bollan to be presented. Mr. Dan- 
forth, who is President of the Council, told the Governor, 
upon enquiry, that it was sent to him to sign, and he sup- 
posed the rest of the Council who had met together, 
would sign after him in order ; but he had since found 
that they had wrote over his name, by order of Council, 
which makes it appear to be an act of Council. This 
may be a low piece of cunning in him, but be it as it may, 
it is proper it should be known, that the whole is no more 
than the doings of a part of the Council only ; although 
even that is not very material, since, if they had all been 
present, without the Governor's summons, the meeting 
would have been irregular and unconstitutional, and ought 
to be discountenanced and censured. I suppose there is 
no instance of the Privy Council's meeting and doing 
business without the King's presence or special direction, 
except in committees upon such business as by his Ma- 
jesty's order has been referred to them by an act of 
Council ; and I have no instance here without the Go- 
vernor, until within three or four months past. 

I thought it very necessary the circumstances of this 
proceeding should be known, though if there be no neces- 
sity for it, I think it would be best it should not be known 
that the intelligence comes from me. 

I am, with very great regard, Sir, 

Your most humble and most obedient servant, 

Tho. Hutchinson. 



28 LETTERS, fcO. 

.Boston, Jan. 20, 1769. 

Dear Sir : — You have laid me under very great obli- 
gations by the very clear and full account of proceedings 
in Parliament, which I received from you by Capt, Scott. 
You have also done much service to the people of the 
province. For a day or two after the ship arrived, the 
enemies of government gave out that their friends in Par- 
liament were increasing, and. all things would be soon on 
the old footing ; in other words, that all acts imposing 
duties would be repealed, the Commissioners' board dis- 
solved, the customs put on the old footing, and illicit trade 
be carried on with little or no hazard. It was, very fortu- 
nate that I had it in my power to prevent such a false 
representation from spreading through the province. I 
have been very cautious of using your name, but I have 
been very free in publishing abroad the substance of your 
letter, and declaring that I had my intelligence from the 
best authority, and have in a great measure defeated the 
ill design in raising and attempting to spread so ground- 
less a report. What marks of resentment the Parliament 
will show, whether they will be upon the province in 
general, or particular persons, is extremely uncertain, but 
that they will be placed somewhere is most certain ; and 
I add, because I think it ought to be, so, that those who 
have been most stead}' in preserving the constitution and 
opposing the licentiousness of such as call themselves 
Sons of Liberty, will certainly meet with favor and en- 
couragement. 

This is most certainly a crisis. I really wish that 
there may not have been the least degree of severity be- 
yond what is absolutely necessary to maintain, I think I 
may say to you, the dependance which a colony ought to 



LETTERS, &C. 29 

have upon the present state ; but if no measures shall 
have been taken to secure this dependance, or nothing 
more than some declaratory acts or resolves, it is all over 
with us. The friends of government will be utterly dis- 
heartened, and the friends of anarchy will be afraid of 
nothing, be it ever so extravagant. 

The last vessel from London had a quick passage. We 
expect to be in suspense for the three or four next weeks, 
and then to hear our fate. I never think of the measures 
necessary for the peace and good order of the colonies 
without pain. There must be an abridgment of what are 
called English liberties. I relieve myself by considering 
that in a remove from the state of nature to the most 
perfect state of government, there must be a great re- 
straint of natural liberty. I doubt whether it is possible 
to project a system of government in which a colony 
3000 miles distant from the parent state shall enjoy all 
the liberty of the parent state. I am certain I have 
never yet seen the projection. I wish the good of the 
colony when I wish to see some further restraint of 
liberty, rather than the connection with the parent state 
should be broken ; for I am sure such a breach must 
prove the ruin of the colony. Pardon me this excursion, 
it really proceeds from the state of mind into which our 
perplexed affairs often throws me. 

I have the honor to be, with very great esteem, Sir, 
your most humble and most obedient servant, 

Tho. Hutchinson. 



Boston, October 26, 1769. 
Dear Sir : — I thank you for your last favor of July 



30 LETTERS, &C. 

18th. I fancy in my last to you, .about two months ago, 
I have answered the greatest part of it. 

My opinion upon the combination of the merchants, I 
gave you very fully. How long they will be able to con- 
tinue them it" Parliament should not interpose, is uncer- 
tain. In most articles they ma}' another year, and you 
run the risk of their substituting, when they are put to 
their shifts, something of their own in the place of what 
they used to have from you, and which they will never 
return to you for. But it is not possible that provision 
for dissolving these combinations, and subjecting all who 
do not renounce them to penalties adequate to the offence, 
should not be made the first week the parliament meets. 
Certainly all parties will unite in so extraordinary a case, 
if they never do in any other. So much has been said 
upon the repeal of the duties laid by the last act, that it 
will render it very difficult to keep people's minds quiet, 
if that should be refused them. They deserve punish- 
ment, you will say ; but laying or continuing taxes upon 
all cannot be thought equal, seeing many will be pun- 
ished who are not offenders. Penalties of another kind 
seem bettor adapted. 

I have been tolerably treated since the Governor's de- 
parture, no other charge being made against me in our 
scandalous newspapers, except my bad principles in mat- 
tors of government; and this charge has had little effect, 
and a great many friends promise me support. 

I must beg the favor of you to keep secret every thing 
I write, until we are in a more settled state, for the part}' 
here, either by their agent, or by some of their emissaries 
in London, have sent them every report or rumor of the 



LETTERS, &C. 31 

contents of letters wrote from hence. I hope we shall 
see better times both here and in England. 
I am, with great esteem, Sir, 

Your most obedient servant, 

Tho. Hutchinson. 



Boston, May 7, 1767. 

Sm:^-I am indebted to you for the obliging manner 
in which you received my recommendation of my good 
friend Mr. Paxton, as well as for the account you are 
plensed to send me of the situation of affairs in the 
mother country. 

I am very sorry that the colonies give you so much 
employment, and it is impossible to say how long it will 
be before things settle into quiet among us. We have 
some here who have been so busy in fomenting the late 
disturbances, that they may now think it needful for their 
own security to keep up the spirit. They have plumed 
themselves much upon the victory they have gained, and 
the support they have since met with ; nor could any 
thing better show what they would still be at, than the 
manner in which, by their own account published in the 
newspapers last August, they celebrated the 14th of that 
month, as the first anniversary commemoration of what 
they had done at the tree of Liberty on that day the 
year before. Here a number of respectable gentlemen, 
as they inform us, now met, and among other toasts drank 
General Paoli, and the spark of liberty kindled in Spain. 
I am now speaking of a few individuals only, the body 
of the people are well disposed ; yet when you come to 
see the journal of the House of Representatives the last 



32 LETTERS, &C. 

session, I fear you will think that the same spirit has 
seized our public counsels. I can, however, fairly say 
thus much in behalf of the government, that the last house 
was packed by means of a public proscription just before 
the election, of the greatest part of those who had ap- 
peared in the preceding session in the support of govern- 
ment : their names were published in an inflammatory 
newspaper, and their constituents made to believe they 
were about to sell them for slaves. Writs are now out 
for a new Assembly, but I cannot answer for the choice : 
I hope, however, that the people in general are in a better 
temper; yet the moderate men have been so brow-beaten 
in the House, and found themselves so insignificant there 
the last year, that some of them will voluntarily decline 
coming again. I think this looks too much like a despair 
of the commonwealth, and cannot be justified on patriotic 
principles. 

The election of Counsellors was carried the last year 
as might have been expected from such an house. The 
officers of the crown, and the judges of the superior 
court were excluded. And I hear that it is the design 
of some, who expect to be returned members of the 
house this year, to make sure work at the ensuing elec- 
tion of Counsellors, by excluding, if they can, the gen- 
tlemen of the Council (who by charter remain such till 
•thers are chosen in their room) from any share in the 
choice, though they have always had their voice in it 
hitherto from the first arrival of the charter. If the 
house do this, they will have it in their power to model 
the Council as they please, and throw all the powers of 
government into the hands of the people, unless the Go- 



LETTERS, &C. 33 

vernor should again exert his negative as he did the last 
year. 

You have doubtless seen some of the curious messages 
from the late house to the Governor, and can't but have 
observed with how little decency they have attacked 
both the Governor and the Lieutenant Governor. They 
have also in effect forced the Council to declare themselves 
parties in the quarrel they had against the latter in a 
matter of mere indifference. In their message to the 
Governor of the 21st of January, they have explicitly 
charged the Lieutenant Governor (a gentleman to whom 
they are more indebted than to any one man in the 
government) with " ambition and lust of power," merely 
for paying a compliment to the Governor agreeable to 
ancient usage, by attending him to court, and being pre- 
sent in the council-chamber when he made his speech at 
the opening of the session ; at which time they go on to 
say, " none but the general court and their servants are 
intended to be present," still holding out to the people 
the servants of the crown as objects of insignificance, 
ranking the Secretary with their door-keeper, as servants 
of the Assembly j for the Secretary with his clerks and 
the door-keeper, are the only persons present with the 
Assembly on these occasions. 

The officers of the crown being thus lessened in the 
eyes of the people, takes off their weight and influence, 
and the balance will of course turn in favor of the people, 
and what makes them still more insignificant is their de- 
pendance on the people for a necessary support: If some- 
thing were left to the good-will of the people, yet nature 
should be sure of a support. The Governor's salary has 
for about thirty-five years past been pretty well under- 



34 LETTERS, &C. 

stood to be £1000 a year sterling. When this sum was 
first agreed to, it was very well ; but an increase of 
wealth since has brought along with it an increase of 
luxury, so that what was sufficient to keep up a proper 
distinction and support the dignity of a Governor then, 
may well be supposed to be insufficient for the purpose 
now. The Lieutenant Governor has no appointments as 
such : the Captaincy of Castle-William, which may be 
worth ,£120 sterling a year, is looked upon indeed as an 
appendage to his commission, and the late Lieutenant 
Governor enjoyed no other appointment: he lived a re- 
tired life upon his own estate in the country, and was 
easy. The present Lieutenant Governor indeed has other 
appointments, but the people are quarreling with him for 
it, and will not suffer him to be easy unless he will retire 
also. 

The Secretary may have something more than £200 a 
year sterling, but has for the two last years been allowed 
£60 lawful money a year less than had been usual for 
divers years preceding, though he had convinced the house 
by their Committee, that without this deduction he would 
have had no more than £250 sterling per annum in fees, 
perquisites, and salary altogether, which is not the one 
half of his annual expense. 

The crown did by charter reserve to itself the appoint- 
ment of a Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Secretary; 
the design of this was without doubt to maintain some 
kind of balance between the powers of the crown and of 
the people ; but, if officers are not in some measure inde- 
pendent of the people (for it is difficult to serve two mas- 
ters), they will sometimes have a hard struggle between 
duty to the crown and a regard to self, which must be a 



LETTERS, &C. OO 

very disagreeable situation to them, as well as a weaken- 
ing to the authority of government. The officers of the 
crown are very few, and are therefore the more easily 
provided for without burdening the people : and such 
provision I look upon as necessary to the restoration and 
support of the King's authority. 

But it may be said, How can any new measures be 
taken without raising new disturbances ? The manufac- 
turers in England, will rise again and defeat the measures 
of government. This game, 'tis true, has been phiyed 
once and succeeded, and it has been asserted here, that 
it is in the power of the colonies at any time to raise a 
rebellion in England, by refusing to send for their manu- 
factures. 

For my own part, I do not believe this. The merchants 
in England, and I don't know but those in London and 
Bristol only, might always govern in this matter and quiet 
the manufacturer. The merchant's view is always to his 
own interest. As the trade is now managed, the dealer 
here sends to the merchant in England for his goods, upon 
these goods the English merchant puts a profit of 10 or 
more, probably 15 per cent, when he sends them to his 
employer in America. The merchant is so jealous of 
foregoing this profit, that an American trader cannot well 
purchase the goods he wants of the manufacturer ; for 
should the merchant know that the manufacturer had 
supplied an American, he would take off no more of his 
wares. The merchants therefore having this profit in 
view, will by one means or other secure it. They know 
the goods which the American market demands, and may 
therefore safely take them off from the manufacturer, 
though they should have no orders for shipping them this 



36 LETTERS, &C. 

year or perhaps the next ; and I dare say, it would not 
be longer before the Americans would clamor for a sup- 
ply of goods from England, for it is vain to think they 
can supply themselves. The merchant might then put 
an advanced price upon his goods, and possibly be aide 
to make his own terms ; or if it should be thought the 
goods would not bear an advanced price to indemnify 
him, it might be worth while for the government to agree 
with the merchants beforehand to allow them a premium 
equivalent to the advance of their stock, and then the 
game would be over. "' 

I have wrote with freedom, in confidence of my name's 
not being used on the occasion. For though I have wrote 
nothing but what in my conscience I think an American 
may upon just principles advance, and what a servant of 
the Crown ought upon all proper occasions to suggest, yet 
the many prejudices I have to combat with, may render 
it unfit it should be made public. 

I communicated to Governor Bernard what j r ou men- 
tioned concerning him, who desires me to present you 
his compliments, and let you know that he is obliged to 
you for the expressions of your regard for his injured 
character. 

I am, with great respect, Sir, 

Your most obedient and most humble servant, 

Andrew Oliver. 

I ask your acceptance of a journal of the last session, 
which is put up in a box directed to the Secretary of the 
Board of trade. 



LETTERS, &C. 37 

Boston, May 11, 1768. 
Sir: — I am at this moment favored with your very 
obliging letter by Capt. Jarvis, of the 2d March, which I 
have but just time to acknowledge, as this is the day 
given out for the ship to sail. I wrote you the 23d of 
February in reply to your letter of the 28th December ; 
that of the 12th February which you refer to in this of 
the 2d of March is not yet come to hand. You lay me, 
Sir, under the greatest obligations, as well for the inter- 
esting account of public affairs, which you are from time 
to time pleased to transmit me, as for your steady atten- 
tion to my private concerns. 1 shall always have the 
most grateful sense of Mr. Grenville's intentions of favor 
also, whether I ever reap any benefit from them or not. 
Without a proper support afforded to the King's officers, 
the respect due to government will of course fail ; yet I 
cannot say whether, under the present circumstances, and 
considering the temper the people are now in, an addi- 
tional provision for me would be of real benefit to me 
personally or not. It has been given out, that no person 
who receives a stipend from the government at home, 
shall live in the country. Government here wants some 
effectual support. No sooner was it known that the Lieu- 
tenant Governor had a provision of ,£200 a year made 
for him out of the revenue, than he was advised in the 
Boston Gazette to resign all pretensions to a seat in coun- 
cil, either with or without a voice. The temper of the 
people will be surely learnt from that infamous paper ; it 
is the very thing that forms their temper ; for if they 
are not in the temper of the writer at the time of the 
publication, yet it is looked upon as the Oracle, and they 



38 



LETTERS, &C. 



soon bring their temper to it. Some of the latest of 
them are very expressive ; I will not trouble you with 
sending them, as I imagine they some how or other find 
their way to you. But I cannot but apprehend from these 
papers, and from hints that are thrown out, that if the pe- 
tition of the House to his Majesty, and their letters to 
divers^ noble Lords should fail of success, some people 
will be mad enough to go to extremities. The Commis- 
sioners of the Customs have already been openly affronted, 
the Governor's company of Cadets have come to a reso- 
lution not to wait on him (as usual) on the day of Gene- 
ral Election, the 25th instant, if those gentlemen are of 
the company. And the Town of Boston have passed a 
Vote that Fancuil Hall (in which the Governor and his 
company usually dine on that day) shall not be opened 
to him, if the Commissioners are invited to dine with 
him. A list of Counsellors has within a few days past 
been printed and dispersed by way of sneer on Lord 
Shelburne's letter, made up of King's officers ; which 
list, the writer says, if adopted at the next general elec- 
tion, may take away all grounds of complaint, and may 
possibly prove a healing and a very salutary measure. 
The Lieutenant Governor is at the head of this list, they 
have done me the honor to put me next ; the Commis- 
sioners of the Customs are all in the list except Mr. 
Temple, and to complete the list, they have added some 
of the waiters. I never thought till very lately that they 
acted upon any settled plan, nor do I now think they 
have till of late ; a few, a very few among us, have 
planned the present measures, and the government has 
been too weak to subdue their turbulent spirits. Our 



LETTERS, &C. 39 

situation is not rightly known : but it is a matter worthy 
of the most serious attention. 

I am, with the greatest respect, Sir, 

Your most obedient and most humble servant, 

Andrew Oliver. 

I shall take proper care to forward your letter to Mr. 
Ingersol. He had received your last. 



Boston, February 13, 1769. 

Sir : — I have your very obliging favor of the 4th of 
October. I find myself constrained, as well by this let- 
ter as by my son and daughter Spooner's letters since, to 
render you my most sincere thanks for the very polite 
notice you have taken of them ; and I pray my most re- 
spectful compliments to the good lady, your mother, 
whose friendly reception of them at Nonsuch has, I find, 
engaged their warmest esteem and respect — He hath 
wrote us that he had a prospect of succeeding in the 
business he went upon ; but the last letter we had was 
from her of the 23d of November, acquainting us that 
he had been very ill, but was getting better. She writes 
as a person overcome with a sense of the kindness they 
had met with, in a place where they w T ere strangers, on 
this trying occasion. 

You have heard of the arrival of the King's troops ; 
the quiet reception they met with among us was not at 
all surprising to me. I am sorry there was any occasion 
for sending them. From the address of the Gentlemen 
of the Council to General Gage, it might be supposed 
there was none. I have seen a letter from our friend In- 



40 LETTERS, &C. 

gersoll with this paraphrase upon it — " We hope that 
3'our Excellency observing with your own eyes, now the 
troops are among us, our peaceable and quiet behavior, 

will be convinced that that wicked G r 13 d 

told a fib in saying, We were not so before they came." 

I have given } r ou the sense of a stranger on a single 
paragraph of this address, because I suspected my own 
opinion of it, till I found it thus confirmed. If you have 
the newspapers containing the address, your own good 
sense will lead you to make some other remarks upon it, 
as well as to trace the influence under which it seems 
to have been penned. The disturbers of our peace take 
great advantage of such aids, from people in office and 
power. The Lieutenant Governor has communicated to 
me your letter, containing an account of the debates in 
parliament, on the first day of the session. We soon 
expect their decision on American affairs, some I doubt 
not with fear and trembling. Yet I have very lately had 
occasion to know, that be the determination of parlia- 
ment what it will, it is the determination of some to agree 
to no terms that shall remove us from our old foundation. 
This confirms me in an opinion, that I have taken up a 
long time since, that if there be no way to take off the 
original incendiaries, they will continue to instill their 
poison into the minds of the people, through the vehicle 
of the Boston Gazette. 

In your letter to the Lieutenant Governor, you ob- 
serve upon two defects in our constitution, the popular 
election of the Council, and the return of Juries by the 
Towns. The first of these arises from the Charter itself; 
the latter from our provincial Laws. The method of ap- 
pointing our Grand Juries lies open to management. 



LETTERS, &C. 41 

Whoever pleases, nominates them at our town-meetings; 
by this means one who was supposed to be a principal 
in the Riots of the 10th of June last, was upon that 
Jury, whose business it was to inquire into them. But 
the provincial legislature hath made sufficient provision 
for the return of Petit Juries by their act of 23d Geo. 
2d, which requires the several towns to take lists of all 
persons liable by law to serve, and forming them into two 
classes, put their names written on separate papers into 
two different boxes, one for the superior court, and the 
other for the inferior. And when venires are issued, the 
number therein required are to be drawn out in open town- 
meeting, no person to serve oftener than once in three 
years. The method of appointing Grand Juries appears 
indeed defective ; but if the other is not, it may be im- 
puted to the times rather than to the defect of the laws, 
that neither the Grand Juries nor the Petit Juries have 
of late answered the expectations of government. 

As to the appointment of the Council, I am of opinion 
that neither the popular elections in this province, nor 
their appointment in what are called the royal govern- 
ments by the King's mandamus, are free from exceptions, 
especially if the Council as a legislative body is intended 
to answer the idea of the House of Lords in the British le- 
gislature. There they are supposed to be a free and inde- 
pendent body, and on their being such, the strength and firm- 
ness of the constitution does very much depend : whereas 
the election or appointment of the Councils in the manner 
before-mentioned, renders them altogether dependent on 
their constituents. The King is the fountain of honor, 
and as such the peers of the realm derive their honors 
from him ; but then they hold them by a surer tenure 



42 LETTERS, &C. 

than the provincial Counsellors, who are appointed by 
mandamus. On the other hand, our popular elections 
very often expose them to contempt j for nothing is more 
common, than for the representatives, when they find the 
Council a little untractable at the close of the year, to re- 
mind them that May is at hand. 

It may be accounted by the colonies as dangerous to 
admit of any alterations in their charters, as it is by the 
Governors in the church to make any in the establish- 
ment ; yet to make the resemblance as near as may be to 
the British Parliament, some alteration is necessary. 

It is not requisite, that I know of, that a Counsellor 
should be a Freeholder ; his residence according to the 
charter, is a sufficient qualification ; for that provides 
onty, that he be an inhabitant of or proprietor of lands 
within the district for which he is chosen : whereas the 
Peers of the realm sit in the House of Lords, as I 
take it, in virtue of their baronies. If there should be a 
reform of any of the colony charters, with a view to keep 
up the resemblance of the three estates in England, the 
legislative Council should consist of men of landed es- 
tates : but as our landed estates here are small at present, 
the yearly value of £100 sterling per annum, might in 
some of them at least be a sufficient qualification. As our 
estates are partable after the decease of the proprietor, the 
honor could not be continued in families as in England. 
It might however be continued in the appointee quam dm 
bene se gesserit, and proof be required of some malpractice 
before a suspension or removal. Bankruptcy also might 
be another ground for removal. A small legislative Coun- 
cil might answer the purposes of government ; but it 
might tend to weaken that leveling principle, which is 



LETTERS, &C. 43 

cherished by the present popular constitution, to have an 
honorary order established, out of which the Council 
should be appointed. There is no way now to put a man 
of fortune above the common level, and exempt him from 
being chosen by the people into the lower offices, but his 
being appointed a Justice of the Peace ; this is frequently 
done, when there is no kind of expectation of his under- 
taking the trust, and has its inconveniences. For remedy 
hereof it might be expedient to have an order of Patri- 
cians or Esquires instituted, to be all men of fortune or 
good landed estates, and appointed by the Governor with 
the advice of Council, and enrolled in the Secretary's 
office, who should be exempted from the lower offices in 
government, as the justices now are ; and to have the 
legislative Council (which in the first instance might be 
nominated by the Crown) from time to time filled up, as 
vacancies happen, out of this order of men, who, if the 
order consisted only of men of landed estates, might 
elect, as the Scottish Peers do, only reserving to the 
King's Governor, a negative on such choice. The King 
in this case would be still acknowledged as the fountain 
of honor, as having, in the first instance, the appointment 
of the persons enrolled, out of whom the Council are to 
be chosen, and finally having a negative on the choice. 
Or, the King might have the immediate appointment by 
mandamus, as at present in the royal governments. As 
the gentlemen of the Council would rank above the body 
from which they are taken, they might bear a title one 
degree above that of Esquire. Besides this legislative 
Council, a privy Council might be established, to consist 
of some or all of those persons who constitute the legis- 
lative Council, and of other persons members of the 



44 LETTERS, &C. 

House of Representatives, or otherwise of note or dis- 
tinction ; which would extend the honors of government, 
and afford opportunity of distinguishing men of character 
and reputation, the expectation of which would make go- 
vernment more respectable. 

I would not trouble you with these reveries of mine, 
were I not assured of your readiness to forgive the 
communication, although you could apply it to no good 
purpose. 

Mr. Spooner sent me a pamphlet under a blank cover, 
entitled, " the state of the nation." I run over it by my- 
self before I had heard any one mention it, and thought 
I could evidently mark the sentiments of some of my 
friends. By what I have since heard and seen, it looks 
as if 1 was not mistaken. Your right honorable friend I 
trust will not be offended if I call him mine — I am sure 
you will not when I term you such. I have settled it for 
a long time in my own mind, that without a representa- 
tion in the supreme legislature, there cannot be that union 
between the head and the members as to produce a health- 
ful constitution of the whole body. I have doubted 
whether this union could be perfected by the first experi- 
ment. The plan here exhibited seems to be formed in 
generous and moderate principles, and bids the fairest of 
any I have yet seen to be adopted. Such a great design 
may, as in painting, require frequent touching before it 
becomes a piece highly finished ; and after all, may re- 
quire the meliorating hand of time to make it please uni- 
versally. Thus the British constitution, considered as 
without the colonies, attained its glory. The book I had 
sent me is in such request, that I have not been able to 
keep it long enough by me, to consider it in all its parts. 



LETTERS, &C. 45 

I wish to hear how it is received in the House of Com- 
mons. I find by the publications, both of Governor 
Pownall and Mr. Bollan, that they each of them adopt 
the idea of an union and representation, and I think it 
must more and more prevail. The argument against it 
from local inconveniency, must, as it appears to me, be 
more than balanced by greater inconveniences on the other 
side the question : the great difficulty will be in the terms 
of union. I add no more, as I fear I have already tres- 
passed much on your time and patience, but that I am, 
Sir, 

Your obliged and most obedient humble servant, 

Andrew Oliver. 



New York, August 12, 1769. 

Sir : — I have been in this city for some time past exe- 
cuting (with others) his Majesty's commission for settling 
the boundary between this province and that of New Jer- 
sey. I left Boston the 11th July, since which, my advices 
from London have come to me very imperfect ; but as my 
friend Mr. Thompson writes me, that he had drawn up 
my case, and with your approbation laid it before the D. 
of Grafton, I think it needful once more to mention this 
business to you. 

There was a time when I thought the authority of 
government might have been easily restored ; but while 
its friends and the officers of the crown are left to an ab- 
ject dependence on those very people who are under- 
mining its authority; and while these are suffered not 
only to go unpunished, but on the contrary, meet with all 
kind of support and encouragements cannot be expected 



46 LETTERS, &C. 

that you will ever again recover that respect, which the 
colonies had been wont to pay to the parent state. Go- 
vernment at home will deceive itself, if it imagines that 
the taking off the duty on glass, paper, and painters' 
colors, will work a reconciliation, and nothing more than 
this, as I can learn, is proposed in Ld. II. 's late circular 
letter. It is the principle that is now disputed ; the com- 
bination against importation extends to tea, although it 
comes cheaper than ever, as well to the other foremen- 
tioned articles. In Virginia it is extended lately to 
wines : and I have heard one of the first leaders in these 
measures in Boston say, that we should never be upon a 
proper footing till all the revenue acts from the 15th 
Charles II. were repealed. Our Assembly in the Massa- 
chusetts may have been more illiberal than others in their 
public messages and resolves ; yet we have some people 
among us still who dare to speak in favor of government. 
But here I do not find so much as one, unless it be some 
of the King's servants ; and yet my business here leads 
me to associate with the best. They universally approve 
of the combination against importing of goods from Great 
Britain, unless the revenue acts are repealed, which ap- 
pears to me little less than assuming a negative on all 
acts of parliament which they do not like ! They say 
expressly, we are bound by none made since our emigra- 
tion, but such as for our own convenience we choose to 
submit to ; such, for instance, as that for establishing a 
post-office. The Bill of Rights and the Habeas Corpus 
Acts, they say, are only declaratory of common law, 
which we brought with us. 

Under such circumstances as these, why should I wish 
to expose myself to popular resentment ? Were I to re- 






LETTERS, &C. 47 



ceive any thing out of the revenue, I must expect to be 
abused for it. Nor do I find that our Chief Justice has 
received the £200 granted him for that service ; and yet 
the Assembly have this year withheld his usual grant, 
most probably because he has such a warrant from the 
crown. 

With regard to my negotiations with Mr. Rogers, I did 
in conformity to your opinion make an apology to Mr. 
Secretary Pownall for mentioning it, and there submitted 
it. I hear it has been since talked of; but unless I could 
be assured in one shape or other of £300 per annum, 
with the other office, I would not choose to quit what I 
have. I have no ambition to be distinguished, if I am 
only to be held up as a mark of popular envy or resent- 
ment. I was in hopes before now, through the interven- 
tion of your good offices, to have received some mark of 
favor from your good friend ; but the time is not yet 
come to expect it through that channel ! I will however 
rely on your friendship, whenever you can with propriety 
appear in forwarding my interest, or preventing any thing 
that may prove injurious to it. 

If Mr. R. has interest enough to obtain the Secretary's 
place, I shall upon receiving proper security think myself 
in honor bound to second his views, though I have none 
at present from him but a conditional note he formerly 
wrote me. If he is not like to succeed, and my son 
Daniel could have my place, I would be content, unless 
affairs take a different turn, to resign in his favor, whether 
administration should think proper to make any further 
provision for me or not. And yet I never thought of 
withdrawing myself from the service, while there ap- 
peared to me any prospect of my being able to promote it. 



48 LETTERS, &G. 

If I have wrote with freedom, I consider I am writing 
to a friend, and that I am perfectly safe in opening my- 
self to you. 

I am, with great respect, Sir, 

Your most obedient humble servant, 

Andrew Oliver. 



Dear Sir : — The Commissioners of the Customs have 
met with every insult since their arrival at Boston, and 
at last have been obliged to seek protection on board his 
Majesty's ship Komney. Mr. Hallowell, the Comptroller 
of the Customs, who will have the honor to deliver you 
this letter, will inform you of many particulars ; he is 
sent by the Board with their letters to government. Un- 
less we have immediately two or three regiments, 'tis the 
opinion of all the friends to government, that Boston will 
be in open rebellion. 

I have the honor to be, with the greatest respect and 

warmest regard, 

Dear Sir, 

Your most faithful and obliged servant, 

Charles Paxton. 

On board Ms 3Iaj'esf//s Ship Romney, \ 
Boston Harbor, June 20, 1768. / 



Boston, Dec. 12,1708. 

Mr Dear Sir : — I wrote you a few days ago, and did 

not then think of troubling you upon any private affair 

of mine, at least not so suddenly ; but within this day 

or two, I have had a conversation with Mr. Oliver, Secre- 



LETTERS, &C. 49 

tary of the province, the design of which was my suc- 
ceeding to the post he holds from the crown, upon the 
idea, that provision would be made for Governor Bernard, 
and the Lieutenant Governor would succeed to the chair, 
then the Secretary is desirous of being Lieutenant Go- 
vernor, and if in any way three hundred pounds a year 
could be annexed to the appointment. You are sensible 
the appointment is in one department, and the grant in 
another ; now the present Lieutenant Governor has an 
assignment of £200 a year upon the customs here ; he 
has not received any thing from it as yet, and is doubtful 
if he shall ; he has no doubt of its lapse to the crown, if 
he has the chair; if then by any interest, that sum could 
be assigned to Mr. Oliver as Lieutenant Governor, and 
if he should be allowed (as has been usual for all Lieu- 
tenant Governors) to hold the command of the castle, 
that would be another £100. This would complete the 
Secretary's views ; and he thinks his public services, the 
injuries he has received in that service, and the favorable 
sentiments entertained of him by government, may lead 
him to these views, and he hopes for the interest of his 
friends. The place of Secretary is worth £300 a year, 
but is a provincial grant at present, so that it will not 
allow to be quartered on; and as I had views upon the 
place when I was in England, and went so fir as to con- 
verse with several men of interest upon it, though I never 
had an opportunity to mention it to 3 r ou after I recovered 
my illness. I hope you will allow me your influence, and 
by extending it at the Treasury, to facilitate the assign- 
ment of the £200 a year; it will be serving the Secretary, 
and it will very much oblige me. The Secretary is ad- 
vanced in life, though much more so in health, which has 



50 LETTERS, &C. 

been much impaired by the injuries he received, nnd he 
wishes to quit the more active scenes; he considers this 
as a kind of othnn cum dignitate, and from merits one may 
think he has a claim to it. I will mention to yon the 
gentlemen who are acquainted with my views, and M-hose 
favorable approbation I have had. Governor Pownall, 
Mr. John Pownall, and Dr. Franklin. My Lord Hills- 
borough is not unacquainted with it. I have, since I 
have been here, wrote Mr. Jackson upon the subject, and 
have by this vessel wrote Mr. Mauduit. I think my 
character stands fair. I have not been without applica- 
tion to public affairs, and have acquired some knowledge 
of our provincial affairs, and notwithstanding our mnny 
free conversations in England, I am considered here as on 
government side, for which I have been often traduced 
both publicly and privately, and veiy lately have had two 
or three slaps. The Governor and Lieutenant Governor 
are fully acquainted with the negotiation, and I meet 
their approbation ; all is upon the idea the Governor is 
provided for, and there shall by any means be a vacancy 
of the Lieutenant Governor's place. I have gone so far 
as to say to some of my friends, that rather than not suc- 
ceed I would agree to pay the Secretary £100 a year out 
of the office, to make up £300, provided he could obtain 
only the assignment of £200 — but the other proposal 
would, to be sure, be most eligible. I scarce know any 
apology to make for troubling you upon the subject ; the 
friendship you shewed me in London, and the favorable 
expressions you made use of to the Lieutenant Governor 
in my behalf, encourage me, besides a sort of egotism, 
which inclines men to think what they wish to be real. 



LETTERS, &0. 51 

I submit myself to the enquiries of any of my country- 
men in England, but I should wish the matter may be 
secret till it is effected. 

I am, with very great respect and regard, my dear Sir, 
Your most obedient and most humble servant, 

Nath. Rogers. 



REMARKS 

IN DEFENCE OF THE FOREGOING LETTERS. 



BY ISEAEL MAUDUIT. 



These are the letters, upon which the Assembly have 
artfully been induced to pass their censures, and have 
founded an Address to remove his Majesty's Governor 
and Lieutenant Governor. Unable to point out a single 
action of the Governor's during his four years administra- 
tion, they find themselves under a necessity of recurring 
to letters, written before the time, when either of these 
gentlemen were possessed of the offices which they now 
enjoy. 

Upon the revival of them, I see strong proofs of Mr. 
Hutchinson's judgment and understanding, of his just no- 
tions of the interest of that country and of this, and of 
his fidelity and steady regard to the welfare of both : 
but am at a loss to find what there is in them, which can 
be a ground of blame ; and much less warrant the very 
extraordinary censures, which have been j^assed on them. 
They are his private correspondence with the late Mr. 
Thomas Whately, a private Gentleman in London : a 

(52) 



REMARKS IN DEFENCE OF THE FOREGOING LETTERS. 53 

Member of Parliament indeed, and one who lias been 
Secretary to the Treasury : but who was then out of 
place; and far from being connected with Government, 
during the whole time while these letters were writing, 
was voting in opposition. Being neither of them in trade, 
their letters did not contain bills or invoices, but they 
turned upon subjects which Gentlemen naturally write 
about to each other : the occurrences of the time, and 
the several public matters, which were transacting in the 
places where each of them resided. The intelligences 
they contain may have come to hand something earlier 
than those by the common conveyance. But the facts 
themselves were, soon after, all known to every man in 
this country as well as that. 

They give an account of a riot at Boston, upon the 
seizure of a smuggling vessel belonging to Mr. Hancock, 
a principal supporter of the party, and one of the Com- 
mittee appointed to the management of the censure passed 
upon these letters ; but of this riot we all of us in due 
time from our several correspondents, knew full as much 
as Mr. Whately did from his.* 

The letters mention the combination at Boston against 
taking our goods : but is it a crime to write as news, what 
they wished to have told to all the world ? and printed 
in their newspapers for that very purpose, in order to 
bully our Ministers, and frighten our Merchants and 

* In this riot, Mr. Harrison, the Collector, an old Gentleman of an irre- 
proachable character, and very respectable appearance, received a contusion in 
his breast by a brick-bat, which was thrown at him, under the ill-effects of 
which he languished for more than twelve months, and probably might have 
been trampled to death, if his son and others had not rescued him. This is 
what they called a Brush, or small disturbance with boys and negroes. 



54 REMARKS IN DEFENCE OF THE FOREGOING LETTERS. 

Manufacturers. They mention that upon the Governor's 
not judging it proper to call an Assembly at the will of 
the party leaders at Boston, these townsmen took upon 
themselves to write circular letters to all the towns and 
districts, to send one person each to Boston. And do 
we not all know that they did send such summons ? and 
that this Mock Assembly did meet ? and did they not 
desire that the world should know it, and publish their 
resolves for that purpose ? 

These letters mention the need there is of the govern- 
ment's supporting and encouraging the officers of the 
crown in the faithful discharge of their duty. And had 
not the House of Commons long before this determined 
the very same thing ? and did they not address his Ma- 
jesty, that he would so support and countenance them ? 
They mention the common people's having been worked 
up into a frenzy, and their having talked of dying in' de- 
fence of their liberties. And have they not been per- 
petually publishing threatenings of the same sort ? and 
in all their papers sounding the trumpet of mutiny and 
sedition ? 

The letters say that many of rank above the vulgar, 
and some in public posts, had encouraged this frenzy. 
And do these censurers pretend to say they were not in 
such a state of confusion ? Far from denying the truth 
of this account, the Committee of Council themselves ac- 
knowledge that " the state of things at this time was 
greatly disordered, but the greatness of this disorder they 
say arose from other causes ; which they there enume- 
rate." Whether they or Mr. Hutchinson were right in 
their judgment about the causes of these disorders is im- 
material to the present argument. Both acknowledge 



REMARKS IN DEFENCE OF THE FOREGOING LETTERS. 55 

that there were disorders. And had not Mr. Hutch- 
inson as good a right to give his opinion about the 
causes of them to a private correspondent, as these gen- 
tlemen have openly to traduce the British Government, 
and to say that they were owing to them ? 

With the relation of these facts, the letters mention 
the writer's sentiments upon Government, and such other 
subjects as occur : sentiments which, as Mr. Hutchinson 
justly observes, contain nothing respecting the constitu- 
tion of the colonies, more than what is contained in his 
public speeches to the Assembly. But whether they did 
or did not, will these sons of liberty, as they affect to call 
themselves, avow the position, that a Gentleman of Bos- 
ton ought not to write his opinions to his friend in Lon- 
eon, unless those opinions do exactly coincide with theirs ? 
I say nothing of the moderation and good temper which 
appears in all these letters ; for if they could have been 
still more temperate, yet, while Mr. Hutchinson stands 
in the way of the leaders of a faction, who can live by 
nothing but confusion, they would have equally con- 
demned them. They wanted nothing more than to get 
some letters under the Governor's hand ; and whatever 
the}'' were they would have condemned them in the same 
manner as they do these, and have found that the design 
of them was to overthrow the Constitution, and to intro- 
duce arbitrary power into the province. Thus they have 
treated their former Governors ; thus they have treated 
this ; and, if Mr. Hutchinson were to die, in three months 
time they would treat his successor in the same manner. 

I might justly rest the matter here ; and appeal to 
every impartial reader, whether if his own private cor- 
respondence should, by any act of fraud or perfid}^ hap- 



5G I! I'M ARKS IN DEFENCE OF THE FOREGOING LETTERS. 

pen to be betrayed, he would not feel himself happy to 
find, that his letters contained as many things as these 
do, for his friends to commend, and so very few for the 
malice of his enemies to carp at. But as these men affect 
a mighty concern lest Mr. Whately should have shewed 
his letters to the King; and they might interrupt and 
" alienate the affections of our most gracious Sovereign 
King George the Third, from his loyal and affectionate 
province ; and destroy the harmony and good-will between 
Great Britain and that colony, which every friend to 
either would wish to establish :" and as the generality of 
people here, misled by false representations and feigned 
letters in newspapers, are but too apt to believe them, 
this makes it necessary to take off the mask of hypoc- 
risy, and to exhibit them in their own proper features. 
When the reader will himself see, that all these fearful 
apprehensions of his Majesty's displeasure, and all these 
professed desires of harmony between Great Britain and 
the Colony, are mere mockery and insult j and that they 
really mean the direct contrary. 

See, reader, the true standard of their loyalt} r , ex- 
tracted from the Journals of the last House of Represen- 
tatives. The party had it not in their power to make a 
declaratory Act of Assembly, because they knew that the 
Governor would not pass it : but they passed the follow- 
ing declaratory resolutions : 

Mercuru, 3 die Marin, A. D. 1773. 

" The House, according to order, entered into the con- 
sideration of the report of the Committee appointed to 
consider his Excellency's message relative to the salaries 



REMARKS IN DEFENCE OF THE FOREGOING LETTERS. 57 

of the Justices of the Superior Court ; and thereupon 
the following resolves were passed : 

" Whereas, by an act of the British Parliament, made 
and passed in the sixth year of his present Majesty's 
reign, it is declared, That the King, Lords, and Commons 
in Parliament assembled have, ever had, and of right 
ought to have, full power and authority to make laws 
and statutes of sufficient force and validity, to bind the 
colonies and people of America, subjects of the Crown 
of Great Britain, in all cases whatever ; and afterwards 
the same Parliament made and passed an act for levying 
duties in America, with the express purpose of raising a 
revenue, and to enable his Majesty to appropriate the 
same for the necessary charges of the administration of 
justice, and the support of civil government in such colo- 
nies where it shall be judged necessary, and towards fur- 
ther defraying the expenses of defending, protecting, and 
securing said dominions. And his Majesty has been 
pleased, by virtue of the same last-mentioned act, to ap- 
propriate a part of the revenue thus raised against the 
consent of the people, in providing for the support of the 
Governor of the province ; and from his Excellency's 
message of the 4th of February we cannot but conclude, 
that provision is made for the support of the Judges of 
the Superior Court of Judicature, independent of the 
grants and acts of the General Assembly, contrary to the 
invariable usage of this province :" therefore, 

" Resolved, That the admitting any authority to make 
laws binding on the people of this province in all cases 
whatsoever, saving the General Court or Assembly, is in- 
consistent with the spirit of our free constitution, and is 
repugnant to one of the most essential clauses in our 



58 REMARKS IN DEFENCE OF THE FOREGOING LETTERS. 

charter, whereby the inhabitants are entitled to all the 
liberties of free and natural born subjects, to all intents, 
constructions, and purposes whatsoever, as if they had 
been born within the realm of England. It reduces the 
people to the absolute will and disposal of a Legislature, 
in which they can have no voice, and who may make it 
their interest to oppress and enslave them. 

" Resolved, That by the Royal Charter aforesaid, ' the 
General Court or Assembly hath full power and authority 
to impose and levy proportionable and reasonable assess- 
ments, rates, and taxes, upon the estates and persons of 
all and every the proprietors and inhabitants of the pro- 
vince, to be issued and disposed of by warrant, under the 
hand of the Governor:, with the advice and consent of the 
Council, for his Majesty's service in the necessary defence 
and support of the government of the province, and the 
protection and preservation of the inhabitants there, ac- 
cording to such acts as are or shall be in force within the 
province.' And the making provision for the support of 
the Governor and the Judges otherwise than by the grants 
and acts of the General Court or Assembly, is a violent 
breach of the aforesaid most important clause in the 
charter : the support of government, in which their sup- 
port is included, being one of the principal purposes for 
which the clause was inserted. 

" Whereas the independence as well as the uprightness 
of the Judges of the land is essential to the impartial ad- 
ministration of justice, and one of the best securities of 
the rights, liberties, and properties of the people, 

" Resolved, therefore, That the making the Judges of 
the land independent of the grants of the people, and 
altogether dependent on the crown, as they will be, if 



REMARKS IN DEFENCE OF THE FOREGOING LETTERS. 59 

while they thus hold their commissions during pleasure, 
they accept of salaries from the crown, is unconstitutional 
and destructive of that security, which every good mem- 
ber of civil society has a just right to be assured of, under 
the due execution of the laws, and is directly the reverse 
of the constitution and appointment of the Judges in 
Great Britain. 

" Resolved, That the dependence of the Judges of the 
land on the crown for their support, tends at all times, 
especially while they hold their commissions during plea- 
sure, to the subversion of justice and equity, and to in- 
troduce oppression and despotic power. 

" Resolved, As the opinion of this House, that while the 
Justices of the Superior Court hold their commissions 
during pleasure, any one of them who shall accept of, 
and depend upon the pleasure of the crown for his sup- 
port, independent of the grants and acts of the General 
Assembly, will discover to the world, that he has not a 
due sense of ' the importance of an impartial administra- 
tion of justice, that he is an enemy to the constitution, 
and has it in his heart to promote the establishment of 
an arbitrary government in the province.' ' 

Header, after the perusal of these resolutions, what 
are all the things said of these men in Mr. Hutchinson's 
letters, compared with what they here say of themselves ? 
Or what is there in his mentioning some particular in- 
stances of their not paying a due obedience to the au- 
thority of government, compared with this open disavowal 
of the whole? Yet the Committee, which drew up these 
resolutions, consisted chiefly of the same individual men, 
with the Committee, which drew up the censure on these 
letters. And indeed they are the same set of men, whose 



GO REMARE$ IX DEFENCE OF IHE FOREGOING LETTERS. 

names appear in all Committees of this sort. These are 
the men, who, in order to give a plausible color to their 
censures, can transform themselves into the appearance 
of the most meek and submissive of all his Majesty's 
subjects, and affect to be greatly alarmed at these private 
rs, and to believe that " they had a natural and effi- 
cacious tendency to interrupt and alienate the affections 
of our Most Gracious Sovereign, King George the Third, 
from this his loyal and affectionate province; to destroy 
that harmony and good-will between Great Britain and 
this colon}-, which every friend to either would wish to 
establish ; and to excite the resentment of the British 
Administration against this province, &c." 

At that very time, when they knew that they had 
been flying in the face of his Majesty, setting acts of 
parliament at defiance, and passing the most seditious 
resolutions against the dignity of the British nation, and 
the supreme authority of the empire ; at that very time 
these tender-minded loyalists are most piteously con- 
cerned about some private letters, lest they should inter- 
rupt and alienate the affections of their Most Gracious 
Sovereign King George the Third : letters which set 
them in a light of innocence, compared with the mutinous 
and insolent portrait, which they have here drawn of 
themselves. 

After having in their public votes spurned at the King's 
orders, assumed to themselves the control of his Courts 
of Justice, and proscribed the King's Judges as enemies 
to the constitution, and promoters of arbitrary govern- 
ment, if they obey the King's order, founded on an act 
of parliament, and receive the King's salaries, they then 
call themselves his most loyal and affectionate subjects. 



REMARKS IN DEFENCE OF THE FOREGOING LETTERS. 61 

They openly recite a solemn act of the British legisla- 
ture, and make a counter declaration of their own in di- 
rect opposition to it ; and then pretend to be mightily 
afraid, lest these letters to Mr. Whately should destroy 
the harmony and good-will between Great Britain and the 
colony. 

But not content with professing their great concern to 
preserve the good-will of the British nation, and to ap- 
pear to his Majesty as his most affectionate subjects, they 
are anxious even about the good opinion of his Ministers ; 
and are grievously concerned, lest these letters should 
excite the resentment of the British Administration. Reader, 
these very men, Adams, Hancock, &c, who, in the form 
of a Committee of Correspondence for the town of Bos- 
ton, have been inflaming all the towns in the province 
against the King's government ; who, in the form of a 
Committee of Assembly, drew up these resolutions, and 
these censures ; these very men, in a message to the 
Governor, 12th February, 1773, express themselves in 
the following terms : " We are more and more convinced, 
that it has been the design of the Administration, totally 
to subvert the constitution, and to introduce arbitrary go- 
vernment into this province." Doubtless, the King's ser- 
vants ought, every man of them, to join in advising his 
Majesty to dismiss his Governor and Lieutenant Governor, 
who could suppose any thing ill of men who stood so 
much in awe of their resentment ? 

There is one remark more, which cannot have escaped 
the reader. One of the chief passages objected to by 
these censurers, is that where Mr. Hutchinson says : "If 
no measures shall have been taken to secure this depend- 
ence, or nothing more than some declaratory acts or re- 



62 REMARKS IN DEFENCE OF THE FOREGOING LETTERS. 

solves, it is all over with us." C;m there possibly be re- 
quired a stronger proof of the truth of this observation 
about the inefficacy of our declaratory act, than the 
counter declaration which we have now seen? yet, after 
having themselves verified the prediction, they would 
have his Majesty turn out his Governor for having 
made it. 

Header, there are but too many men to be found, who, 
after doing a bad thing, will be false enough to charge it 
upon others. There are also other instances of men, who 
having done a wrong thing, will affect to consider as the 
highest affront, they being told that the} r have done it. 
But for men first to do a thing, then to avow it, and 
publish to the world that they have done it, and after 
all this to censure it as a crime in their Governor to sup- 
pose them capable of doing it, — this is a degree of 
effrontery suited only to the complexion of a Boston 
Committee-man. 

There are a few other remarks which it may be of use 
to make upon these letters. 

The only exceptionable expression in Mr. Hutchinson's 
letters, is that in which he says, there must be an abridg- 
ment of wind are catted English Liberties. And this ap- 
pears so, only from our not being apprized of the mean- 
ing of it. An English reader naturally concludes, that 
by English Liberties is meant our being governed, not by 
arbitrary will, but only by Acts of Parliament. In the 
Boston new dialect the import of this phrase is just the 
contrary ; and what they call English Liberties, is the not 
being governed by Acts of Parliament. The reader need 
only look into their votes and public proceedings, to be 
convinced that this is the true and avowed sense in which 



REMARKS IN DEFENCE OF THE FOREGOING LETTERS. 63 

they understand it. In the Charter of the Massachusetts 
colony, King William, in the words of their old Charter, 
says : " And farther our will and pleasure is, and we do 
hereby for us, our heirs, and successors, grant, establish, 
and ordain, That all and every of the subjects of us, our 
heirs, and successors, which shall go to and inhabit within 
our said province and territory, and every of their chil- 
dren, which shall happen to be born there, or on the seas 
in going thither, or returning from thence, shall have and 
enjoy all liberties and immunities of free and natural 
subjects, within any of the dominions of us, our heirs, and 
successors, to all intents, constructions, and purposes what- 
soever, as if they and every of them were born within 
this our realm of England." From King William's reign 
to this, no one ever had the least doubt about the mean- 
ing of this clause ; and the New Englanders have ever 
enjoyed the full benefit of it, by their being treated in 
all parts of the King's dominions, wherever they came, 
not as aliens, but as denisons, and enjoying all the liber- 
ties and immunities of free and natural born subjects. 
This, I say, has invariably hitherto been understood to be 
the meaning of this paragraph. But within these few 
years, the leaders of the faction at Boston have been in- 
structed to put a quite new interpretation upon these 
words, and to say : The people of England have a right 
to choose Representatives for themselves, and are go- 
verned only by Acts of Parliament; the charter says, 
that we shall enjoy all liberties and immunities of free 
and natural subjects within any of the King's dominions ; 
therefore we too have as good a right, as the people of 
England have, to choose our own Representatives, and to 
be governed only by the laws made by our own Assem- 



G4 REMARKS IN DEFENCE OF THE FOREGOING LETTERS. 

bly ; and the Parliament of England have nothing to do 
with us. We, as well as the inhabitants of England, by 
our charter are entitled to English liberties, and therefore 
we will make laws for ourselves ; and no legislature of 
Great Britain has any right to control us. 

A subordinate power of legislation, for the well order- 
ing the several provinces and corporations, and for the 
making laws for their own good government among them- 
selves, that is a power which we can well understand ; 
and accordingly in the Massachusetts Charter, as well as 
in most other Charters, there is an express clause, giving 
them this legislative power, and limiting the extent of it ; 
that its laws shall not be repugnant or contrary to the 
laws of the realm, or as the next paragraph says, repug- 
nant to the laws and statutes of this our realm. But 
these Bostoners passing over this, and all the other 
clauses in their Charter, which provide for their welfare 
and good government, while they continue in the pro- 
vince, have most unfortunately chosen to build their high 
claim of independence upon that single clause which 
grants them nothing while they are in the province, but 
only provides for their good reception in all parts of the 
King's dominions, when they go out of it. 

In opposition to this wild and futile claim of independ- 
ence, Mr. Hutchinson insists, "that from King William's 
days to these, the oldest man living never heard of this 
interpretation. That never before these days was a doubt 
made of the supreme authority of Parliament over every 
part of the empire. That in every government there 
must be somewhere a supreme uncontrolable power, an 
absolute authority to decide and determine. That two 



REMARKS IN DEFENCE OF THE FOREGOING LETTERS. 65 

such powers cannot co-exist, but necessarily will make 
two distinct states." 

Whether it be right or not, that the empire should be 
split into a number of separate and independent govern- 
ments, which shall each of them be at liberty to take 
their own course, and make laws according to their own 
liking, without being subject to any control from that su- 
preme legislature, which has hitherto been thought to 
have the care of the whole, and whose duty it is to see 
that no part of the empire suffer any detriment, that is 
an argument which I leave to the determination of a su- 
perior authority. 

Whether it be a justifiable procedure to foster and en- 
courage this froward humor in the Colonists, and to sup- 
port them in these pretensions of independence, till we 
have nursed up their discontents into mutiny and rebel- 
lion, — whether, I say, it be a justifiable thing to do this, 
for the single purpose of distressing or oversetting a min- 
istry, that I leave to the discretion of our party leaders. 

All that I have to observe is this : That if by English 
liberties and immunities be meant a right given to a set 
of subjects, wherever they go, to erect a legislature of 
their own, and then to say that they will be governed 
by that only, and that the Parliament has nothing to do 
with them ; if, immediately after King James had been 
expelled for attempting to suspend a very few Acts of 
Parliament, it can be supposed, that King William meant 
to assume a power to suspend them all, — we may then 
allow, that the people of Boston have a right to vote 
these to be English liberties. 

But if the British empire be but one empire, and we 
do not wish to see it crumble to pieces, and break it into 

9 



66 REMARKS IN DEFENCE OF THE FOREGOING LETTERS. 

as many separate governments, as are the provinces, 
counties, and corporations contained in it : we must then 
be convinced, that a grant of English liberties and immu- 
nities does not mean a right given to every province or 
corporation of the empire, to separate itself from the rest 
of the British dominions, and to form to itself a legisla- 
ture of its own, which shall be uncontrolable by Parlia- 
ment. 

Or, if the people of Massachusetts Bay will persist in 
the use of this phrase, and will say, that this ought to 
be called English liberties ; we must then say, as Mr. 
Hutchinson does, that the British empire is but one, and 
that to preserve that unity, there must be an abridgment 
of what are (thus absurdly) called English liberties. 



PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS 



ASSEMBLY OP MASSACHUSETTS BAY* 



TO REMOVE 



HIS MAJESTY'S GOVERNOR AND LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR. 



To the Right Hon. the Earl of Dartmouth. 

(Copy.) 

London, August 21, 1773. 

My Lord : — I have just received from the House of 
Representatives of the Massachusetts Bay, their Address 
to the King, which 1 now enclose, and send to your Lord- 
ship with my humble request in their behalf, that you 
would be pleased to present it to his Majesty the first 
convenient opportunity. 

I have the pleasure of hearing from that province by 
my late letters, that a sincere disposition prevails in the 
people there to be on good terms with the Mother Coun- 
try ; that the Assembly have declared their desire only 
to be put into the situation they were in before the stamp 
act; they aim at no novelties. And it is said, that 
having lately discovered, as they think, the authors of 

(67) 



68 PROCEEDINGS ON TIIE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 

their grievances to be some of their own people, their re- 
sentment against Britain is thence much abated. 

This good disposition of theirs (will } r our Lordship 
permit me to say ?) may be cultivated by a favorable 
answer to this Address, which I therefore hope your good- 
ness will endeavor to obtain. 
With the greatest respect, 

I have the Honor to be, my Lord, &c, 

B. Franklin, 
Agent for the House of Representatives. 

To the Clerk of the Council in waiting. 

(Copy.) 

Whitehall, Dec. 3, 1773. 
Sir : — The Agent for the House of Representatives of 
the Province of the Massachusetts Bay, having delivered 
to Lord Dartmouth an Address of that House to the 
King, signed by their Speaker, complaining of the con- 
duct of the Governor and Lieutenant Governor of that 
province, in respect to certain private letters written by 
them to their correspondents in England, and praying 
that they may be removed from their posts in that go- 
vernment ; his Lordship hath presented the said Ad- 
dress to his Majesty ; and his Majesty having signified 
his pleasure, that the said Address should be laid before 
his Majesty in his Privy Council, I am directed by Lord 
Dartmouth to transmit the same accordingly, together 
with a copy of the Agent's letter to his Lordship accom- 
panying the said Address. 
I am, Sir, 

Your most obedient humble servant, 

(Signed.) J. Pownall. 



PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 69 

To the King's Most Excellent Majesty. 

Most Gracious Sovereign : — We, your Majesty's loyal 
subjects, the Representatives of your ancient Colony of 
the Massachusetts Bay, in General Court legally assem- 
bled, by virtue of your Majesty's writ, under the hand 
and seal of the Governor, beg leave to lay this our 
humble Petition before your Majesty. 

Nothing but the sense of the duty we owe to our Sove- 
reign, and the obligation we are under to consult the 
peace and safety of the Province, could induce us to re- 
monstrate to your Majesty the Mai-Conduct of persons 
who have heretofore had the confidence and esteem of 
this people ; and whom your Majesty has been pleased, 
from the purest motives of rendering your subjects happy, 
to advance to the highest places of trust and authority in 
the Province. 

Your Majesty's humble petitioners, with the deepest 
concern and anxiety, have seen the discords and animosi- 
ties which have too long subsisted between your subjects 
of the Parent State and those of the American Colonies. 
And we have trembled with apprehensions that the con- 
sequences, naturally arising therefrom, would at length 
prove fatal to both Countries. 

Permit us humbly to suggest to your Majesty, that 
your subjects here have been inclined to believe, that the 
grievances which they have suffered, and still continue 
to suffer, have been occasioned by your Majesty's minis- 
ters and principal servants being, unfortunately for us, 
misinformed in certain facts of very interesting import- 
ance to us. It is for this reason that former Assemblies 
have from time to time prepared a true state of facts to 
be laid before your Majesty, but their humble remon- 



70 PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 

strances and petitions, it is presumed, have by some 
moans been prevented from reaching }'our Royal hand. 

Your Majesty's petitioners have very lately had before 
them certain papers, from which they humbty conceive, 
it is most reasonable to suppose, that there has long been 
.a conspiracy of evil men in this province, who have con- 
templated measures and formed a plan to advance them- 
selves to power, and raise their own fortunes, by means 
destructive of the charter of the province, at the ex- 
pense of the quiet of the nation, and to the annihilating 
of the rights and liberties of the American colonies. 

And we do, with all due submission to your Majesty, 
beg leave particularly to complain of the conduct of his 
Excellency, Thomas Hutchinson, Esquire, Governor, and 
the Honorable Andrew Oliver, Esquire, Lieutenant Go- 
vernor, of this your Majesty's province, as having a 
natural and efficacious tendency to interrupt and alienate 
the affections of your Majesty, our Rightful Sovereign, 
from this your Loyal Province, to destroy that harmony 
and good-will between Great Britain and this Colon}', 
which every honest subject would strive to establish, to 
excite the resentment of the British Administration 
against this province, to defeat the endeavors of our 
agents and friends to serve us by a fair representation of 
our state of facts, to prevent our humble and repeated 
petitions from reaching the ear of your Majesty, or having 
their desired effect. And finally, that the said Thomas 
Hutchinson and Andrew Oliver have been among the 
chief instruments in introducing a fleet and an army into 
this province, to establish and perpetuate their plans ; 
whereby they have been not only greatl}' instrumental of 
disturbing the peace and harmony of the government, 



PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 71 

and causing unnatural and hateful discords and animosi- 
ties between the several parts of your Majesty's exten- 
sive dominions, but are justly chargeable with all that 
corruption of morals and all that confusion, misery, and 
bloodshed, which have been the natural eifects of posting 
an army in a populous town. 

Wherefore we most humbly pray that your Majesty 
would be pleased to remove from their posts in this go- 
vernment, the said Thomas Hutchinson, Esquire, and 
Andrew Oliver, Esquire, who have, by their above-men- 
tioned conduct and otherwise, rendered themselves justly 
obnoxious to your loving subjects, and entirely lost their 
confidence ; and place such good and faithful men in their 
stead as your Majesty in your great wisdom shall think 
fit. 

In the name and by order of the House of Represen- 
tatives, 

Tho. Cushing, 

Speaker. 



To the Lords' Committee of His Majesty's Privy 
Council, for Plantation Affairs. 

The Petition of Israel Maudirit, humbly shoiveth unto your 

Lordships : 

That having been informed that an Address in the 
name of the House of Representatives of his Majesty's 
Colony of Massachusetts Bay, has been presented to his 
Majesty, by Benjamin Franklin, Esq., praying the re- 
moval of his Majesty's Governor and Lieutenant Go- 



72 PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 

vernor, which is appointed to be taken into consideration 
on Tuesday next. Your petitioner, on the behalf of the 
said Governor and Lieutenant Governor, humbly prays, 
that he may be heard by counsel in relation to the same, 
before your Lordships shall make any report on the said 
Address. 

Israel Mauduit. 
Clemens Lane, Jan. 10, 1774. 



To the Printer of the Public Advertiser. 

Sir: — Finding that two gentlemen have been unfortu- 
nately engaged in a duel, about a transaction and its cir- 
cumstances, of which both of them are totally ignorant 
and innocent, I think it incumbent on me to declare (for 
the prevention of farther mischief, as far as such a decla- 
ration may contribute to prevent it) that I alone am the 
person who obtained and transmitted to Boston the let- 
ters in question. Mr. TV. could not communicate them, 
because they were never in his possession; and for the 
same reason, they could not be taken from him by Mr. 
T. They were not of the nature of private letters be- 
tween friends. They were written by public officers to 
persons in public station, on public affairs, and intended 
to procure public measures ; they were therefore handed 
to other public persons who might be influenced by them 
to produce those measures. Their tendency was to in- 
cense the mother country against her colonies, and, by 
the steps recommended, to widen the breach which the}' 
effected. The chief caution expressed with regard to 
privacy, was, to keep their contents from the Colony 



PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. / d 

Agents, who, the writers apprehended, might return them, 
or copies of them, to America. That apprehension was, 
it seems, well founded ; for the first agent who laid his 
hands on them, thought it his duty to transmit them to 
his constituents. 

B. Franklin, 
Agent for the House of Representatives of Massachusetts Bay. 
Craven Street, Dec. 25, 1773. 



At the Council Chamber, Jan. 11, 1774. 

Present, Lord President, Secretaries of State, and many 
other Lords. 

Dr. Franklin and Mr. Bollan, 
Mr. Mauduit and Mr. Wedderburn. 

Dr. Franklin's Letter, and the Address, Mr. Pownal's 
Letter, and Mr. Mauduit's Petition, were read. 

Mr. Wedderburn. — The Address mentions certain 
papers. I would wish to be informed what are those 
papers. 

Dr. Franklin. — They are the letters of Mr. Hutchin- 
son and Mr. Oliver. 

Court. — Have you brought them ? 

Dr Fran/din. — No ; but here are attested copies. 

Court. — Do you not mean to found a charge upon 
them ? If you do, you must produce the letters. 

Dr. Franhlin. — These copies are attested by several 
gentlemen at Boston, and a Notary Public. 

Mr. Wedderburn. — My Lords, we shall not take advan- 

10 



/i PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 

tage of any imperfection in the proof. We admit that 
the letters are Mr. Hutchinson's and Mr. Oliver's hand 
writing, reserving to ourselves the right of inquiring how 
they were obtained. 

Dr. Franklin. — I did not expect that counsel would 
have been employed on this occasion. 

Court. — Had you not notice sent you of Mr. Mauduit's 
having petitioned to be heard by counsel on behalf of 
the Governor and Lieutenant Governor ? 

Dr. Franklin. — I did receive such notice, but I thought 
that this had been a matter of politics and not of law, 
and have not brought any counsel. 

Court. — Where a charge is brought, the parties have a 
right to be heard by counsel or not, as they choose. 

Mr. MauduiU — My Lords, I am not a native of that 
country, as these gentlemen are. I well know Dr. 
Franklin's abilities, and wish to put the defence of my 
friends more upon a parity with the attack; he will not 
therefore wonder that I choose to appear before your 
Lordships with the assistance of counsel. My friends, 
in their letters to me, have desired (if any proceedings, 
as they say, should be had upon this Address) that they 
may have a hearing in their own justification, that their 
innocence may be fully cleared, and their honor vindi- 
cated ; and have made provision accordingly. I do not 
think myself at libert}', therefore, to give up the assist- 
ance of my counsel, in defending them against this un- 
just accusation. 

Court. — Dr. Franklin may have the assistance of coun- 
sel, or go on without it, as he shall choose. 

Dr. Franklin. — I desire to have counsel. 

Court. — What time shall you want ? 



PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 75 

Dr. Franklin. — Three weeks. 

Ordered, That the further proceedings be on Saturday, 
29th instant. 



The substance of that part of Mr. Wedderburn s Speech 
which related to the obtaining and sending away Mr. 
Whatelys Letters. 

Counsel for the Assembly. 
Mr. Dunning, Mr. John Lee. 

Counsel for the Governor and Lieutenant Governor. 
Mr. Wedderburn. 

At the Council Chamber, 
Saturday, Jan. 29,1774. 

Present, Lord President and thirty-five Lords. 

Mr. Wedderburn. 

My Lords : — The case which now comes before your 
Lordships is justly entitled to all that attention, which, 
from the presence of so great a number of Lords, and of 
so large an audience, it appears to have excited. It is a 
question of no less magnitude, than whether the Crown 
shall ever have it in its power to employ a faithful and 
steady servant in the administration of a Colony. 

In the appointment of Mr. Hutchinson, his Majesty's 
choice followed the wishes of his people ; and no other 
man could have been named, in whom so many favorable 
circumstances concurred to recommend him. 

A native of the country, whose ancestors were among 



7G PROCEEDINGS OX THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 

its first settlers. A gentleman;, who had for man}' years 
presided in their law courts; of tried integrity, of con- 
fessed abilities; and who had long employed those 
abilities, in the study of their history and original con- 
stitution. 

Mj r Lords, if such a man, without their attempting to 
allege one single act of misconduct, during the four years 
in which he has been Governor, is to be borne down by 
the mere surmises of this Address, it must then become 
a case of still greater magnitude, and ever be a matter of 
doubt, whether the Colony shall henceforward pay re- 
spect to any authority derived from this country. 

A charge of some sort, however, is now preferred 
against these gentlemen by this Address ; and the prayer 
of it is, that his Majesty would punish them by a dis- 
graceful removal. 

If they shall appear to have either betrayed the rights 
of the Crown, or to have invaded the rights of the 
people, your Lordships doubtless will then advise his 
Majesty no longer to trust his authority with those who 
have abused it. 

But if no crime is objected to them, no act of miscon- 
duct proved, your Lordships will then do the justice to 
their characters, which every innocent man has a right 
to expect, and grant them that protection and encourage- 
ment, which is due to officers in their station. 

My Lords, this is not the place to give any opinion 
about our public transactions relating to the Colonies, 
and I shall carefully avoid it. But the whole foundation 
of this Address rests upon events of five and six years 
standing ; and this makes it necessary to take up the 
history of them from their first original. 



PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 77 

In the beginning of the year 17G4, * 

* & # $ * # * * * # 

My Lords, after having gone through the history of 
this people, for the last ten years, and shown what has 
been the behaviour of Mr. Hutchinson in all these occur- 
rences, and the very laudable and friendly part he acted 
on every occasion for the good of the colony ; I now 
come to consider the argument upon that footing, on which 
my learned friends have chosen to place it. 

They have read to your Lordships the Assembly's ad- 
dress ; they have read the letters ; and they have read 
the censures passed on them : and, after praying the re- 
moval of his Majesty's Governor and Lieutenant Go- 
vernor, they now tell your Lordships : There is no cause 
to try — there is no charge — there are no accusers — there 
are no proofs. They say that the Governor and Lieu- 
tenant Governor are disliked by the Assembly, and they 
ought to be dismissed, because they have lost the confi- 
dence of those who complain against them. 

My Lords, this is so very extraordinary a proceeding, 
that 1 know of no precedent, except one : but that, I con- 
fess, according to the Roman poet's report, is a case in 
point : 

Nunquam, si quid mihi credis, amavi 
TTnnc honiinem. Sed quo cecidit sub crimine ? — Quisnam 
Delator — Quibus Indicibus ? — Quo Teste probavit — 
Nil horurn — Verbosa et grand is epistola venit 
A Capreis — Bene babet : nil plus interrogo. 

My Lords, the only purport of this important Address 
is, that the Governor and Lieutenant Governor have lost 
the confidence of the people, upon account of some 
papers, which they have voted to be unfriendly to them, 



78 PROCEEDINGS OX THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 

and that they /tare been amongst the chief instruments in in- 
troducing a fleet and army into the province. Your Lord- 
ships have heard the letters read, and are the best judges 
of their tendency. I can appeal to your Lordships, that 
it was not these letters, but their own ill conduct, which 
made it necessary to order the four regiments. In point 
of time it was impossible : for in Mr. Hutchinson's very 
first letter, it appears, that they had an expectation of 
troops. And they arrived in three months after. I 
could appeal too to their own knowledge : for the printed 
collection of Sir Francis Bernard's and General Gage's, 
&c, letters were before them, which indisputably show 
the direct contrary. 

But as my learned friends have not attempted to point 
out the demerits of these letters, I need not enter into 
the defence of them. To call them only innocent letters, 
would be greatly to depreciate them. They contain the 
strongest proofs of Mr. Hutchinson's good sense, his 
great moderation, and his sincere regard to the .welfare of 
that his native province. Yet, for these it is, that they 
tell us he has lost the confidence of the people. 

My Lords, there cannot be a more striking instance of 
the force of truth, than what the Committee, who drew 
up these papers, exemplify in their conduct. In their 
second resolution, they acknowledge the high character, 
in which Mr. Hutchinson stands, upon account of his 
eminent abilities. In the very outset of their address, 
they acknowledge the good nse which he had made of 
those abilities : for he could not have enjoyed their con- 
fidence, as they say he heretofore did, if lie had made a 
bad one. They acknowledge that this confidence sub- 
sisted, at least, till the time of his being made Governor. 



PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 79 

Else they could not express their thankfulness to his Ma- 
jesty as they do, and applaud the appointment of him, 
as proceeding from the purest motives of rendering his sub- 
jects happy. 

In the height of their ill-will, therefore, to Mr. 
Hutchinson, truth looks his enemies full in the face, and 
extorts from them a confession of his merit, even in the 
very act of accusing him. 

But, whatever be the censures which the Assembly 
may have been induced to pass on him, I will now give 
your Lordships a proof of his enjoying the people's con-' 
fidence, to the very time of the arrival of these letters. 

Every one knows that there are few subjects in which 
the people of the colonies have more eagerly interested 
themselves, than in settling the boundary lines between 
the several provinces. Some of your Lordships may re- 
member the long hearings which have been held at this 
Board upon these disputes. Of late, they have taken 
upon themselves to fix the limits of the King's charters. 
An agreement was made between the two Assemblies of 
New York and Massachusetts Bay, that they should each 
appoint their Commissaries, to meet and settle the boun- 
dary line between the two provinces. Both of them no 
doubt looked out for the best men they had for that pur- 
pose. But the people of Massachusetts Bay, after they 
had chosen their Commissaries, still thought that they 
could more securely trust their interests in their hands, 
if Mr. Hutchinson would go along with them. To him 
they had been used to look, as the man who best knew 
the history of their first settlements ; him they con- 
sidered as the ablest defender of the province's rights : 
and had ever found in him the most zealous affection for 



80 PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 

their welfare. The party leaders perhaps might have 
been content to lose to the province any number of acres 
or a few townships, rather than owe to Mr. Hutchinson 
the preservation of them. But they did not dare to set 
their faces against the general sense of the people. The 
Governor was therefore requested to go with the Commis- 
saries, lie did so, and settled for them a much better 
line than they had ever expected. And the New York 
and their own Commissaries, both of them acknowledged 
that the advantage gained to the province, was chiefly 
owing to the superior knowledge and abilities of Mr. 
Hutchinson. 

Thus far, then, the Governor's character stands fair 
and unimpeached. Whatever, therefore, be the founda- 
tion of this Address for his removal, it must be something 
done by him, or known of him, since his return from this 
service just before the arrival of these letters. Your Lord- 
ships will observe that his enemies don't attempt to point out 
a single action, during the four3 r ears in which he has been 
Governor, as a subject of complaint. The whole of this 
Address rests upon the foundation of these letters, writ- 
ten before the time when either of these gentlemen were 
possessed of the offices, from which the Assembly now 
ask their removal. They owe therefore all the ill-will 
which has been raised against them, and the loss of that 
confidence which the Assembly themselves acknowledge 
they had heretofore enjoyed, to Dr. Franklin's good office 
in sending back these letters to Boston. Dr. Franklin 
therefore stands in the light of the first mover and prime 
conductor of this whole contrivance against his Majesty's 
two Governors ; and having by the help of his special 
confidents and party leaders, first made the Assembly his 



PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 81 

Agents in carrying on his own secret designs, he now ap- 
pears before your Lordships to give the finishing stroke 
to the work of his ow 7 n hands. 

How these letters came into the possession of any one 
but the right owners, is still a mystery for Dr. Franklin 
to explain. The}'' who know the affectionate regard 
which the Whatelys had for each other, and the tender 
concern they felt for the honor of their brother's memory, 
as well as their own, can witness the distresses which 
this occasioned. My Lords, the late Mr. Whately was 
most scrupulously cautious about his letters. We lived 
for many years in the strictest intimacy ; and in all those 
years I never saw a single letter written to him. These 
letters, I believe, were in his custody at his death. And 
I as firmly believe, that without fraud, they could not 
have been got out of the custody of the person whose 
hands they fell into. His brothers little wanted this ad- 
ditional aggravation to the loss of him. Called upon by 
their correspondents at Boston ; anxious for vindicating 
their brother's honor and their own, they enquired ; gave 
to the parties aggrieved all the information in their power ; 
but never accused. 

Your Lordships know the train of mischiefs which fol- 
lowed. But wherein had my late worthy friend or his 
family offended Dr. Franklin, that he should first do so 
great an injury to the memory of the dead brother, by 
secreting and sending away his letters ; and then, con- 
scious of what he had done, should keep himself con- 
cealed, till he had nearly, very nearly, occasioned the 
murder of the other. 

After the mischiefs of this concealment had been left 

for five months to have their full operation, at length 
11 



S2 PROCEEDINGS OX THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 

comes out a letter, which it is impossible to read without 
horror ; expressive of the coolest and most deliberate 
malevolence. My Lords, what poetic fiction only had 
penned for the breast of a cruel African, Dr. Franklin has 
realized, and transcribed from his own. His too is the 
language of a Zanga : 

" Know then 'twas I. 

" I forged the letter — I disposed the picture — 

" I hated, I despised, and I destroy." 

What are the motives he assigns for this conduct, I 
shall now more deliberately consider. 

My Lords, if there be any thing held sacred in the in- 
tercourse of mankind, it is their private letters of friend- 
ship. If there can be any such private letters, those 
which passed between the late Mr. Whately and Mr. 
Oliver are such. The friendship between the two fami- 
lies is of thirty years' standing — during all that time there 
has been kept up an intercourse of letters ; first with Mr. 
Whately, the father, and then with the late Mr. Thomas 
Whately, the son. In the course of this friendship, a 
variety of good offices have passed between the two fam- 
ilies : one of these fell within the period of these letters. 
Upon Mr. Oliver's daughter's coming to England with her 
husband upon business, they were received at Nonsuch by 
Mrs. Whately and her sons, as the son and daughter of 
their old friend and correspondent. And accordingly } r our 
Lordships will find, that one part of these letters is to 
return thanks for the civilities shown to Mr. and .Mrs. 
Spooner at Nonsuch. 

These are the letters which Dr. Franklin treats as pub- 
lic letters, and has thought proper to secrete them for his 
own private purpose. How he got at them, or in whose 



PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 83 

hands they were at the time of Mr. Whately's death, the 
Doctor has not yet thought proper to tell us. Till he do, 
he wittingly leaves the world at liberty to conjecture about 
them as they please, and to reason upon those conjectures. 
But let the letters have been lodged where they may, 
from the hour of Mr. Thomas Whately's death, they be- 
came the property of his brother and of the Whately 
family. Dr. Franklin could not but know this, and that 
no one had a right to dispose of them but they only. 
Other receivers of goods dishonorably come by, may 
plead as a pretence for keeping them, that they don't 
know who are the proprietors. In this case there was 
not the common excuse of ignorance ; the Doctor knew 
whose they were, and yet did not restore them to the 
right owner. This property is as sacred and as precious 
to gentlemen of integrity, as their family plate or jewels 
are. And no man who knows the Whatelys will doubt 
but that they would much sooner have chosen, that any 
person should have taken their plate, and sent it to Hol- 
land for his avarice, than that he should have secreted 
the letters of their friends, their brother's friend, and their 
father's friend, and sent them away to Boston, to gratify 
an enemy's malice. 

The reasons assigned for this, are as extraordinary as 
the transaction itself is : They are public letters, to pub- 
lic persons, on public affairs, and intended to produce 
public measures. This, my Lords, is the first j and the 
next reason assigned for publishing them is, because 
the writers desire that the contents of them should be 
kept secret. 

If these are public letters, I know not what can be 
reckoned private. If a letter whose first business is to 



84 PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 

return thanks to an old lady of seventy, for her civilities 
at Nonsuch, be not a private letter, it will be necessary 
that every man should be particularly careful of his 
papers ; for, after this, there never can be wanting a pre- 
tence for making them public* 

But sa3 r s the Doctor, " They were written by public offi- 
cers!' Can then a man in a public station have no pri- 
vate friends, and write no private letters ? Will Dr. 
Franklin avow the principle, that he has a right to make 
all private letters of your Lordships his own, and to apply 
them to such uses as will best answer the purposes of 
party malevolence ? Whatever may have been the con- 
fidence heretofore placed in him, such a declaration will 
not surely contribute to increase it. 

But they were written to persons in public stations. 
Just the contrary to this appears to have been the case. 
Dr. Franklin is too well acquainted with our history not 
to know that Mr. Whately, during both these years, and 
for two years before and after, was only a private Mem- 
ber of Parliament ; and, as Mr. Oliver justly observes in 
a letter of his, They at Boston could not be supposed to apply 
to him as having an interest with the Ministers, when they 
knew that he was all that tune voting in opposition to them. 

Does then the Doctor mean, that his being a Member 
of Parliament placed him in a public station ? And will 
he then avow, that a gentleman's being in Parliament is 
ground sufficient for him to make his letters lawful plun- 
der, and to send them to his enemies ? 

But they tvere zvritten on public affairs. A very grievous 

* The reader will be pleased to observe, that the question here is not 
whether they be good letters or bad ones, but whether they are public letters 
or private. 



PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 85 

offence ! But it is a crime of which probably we all of us 
have been guilty, and ought not surely, for that only, to 
forfeit the common rights of humanity. 

But they were intended to procure public measures. And 
does not every man, who writes in confidence to his friend 
upon political subjects, lament any thing which he thinks 
to be' wrong, and wish to have it amended ? And is this 
a crime of so heinous a nature, as to put Mr. Whately's 
friends out of the common protection, and to give to Dr. 
Franklin a right to hang them up to party rage, and to 
expose them, for what he knew, to the danger of having 
their houses a second time pulled down by popular fury? 

But the writers of them desired secresy. True, they did 
so. And what man is there, who, when he is writing in 
confidence, does not wish for the same thing ? Does not 
every man say things to a friend, which he would not 
choose to have published to other people, and much less 
to his enemies ? Would letters of friendship be letters of 
friendship, if they contained nothing but such indifferent 
things as might be said to all the world ? 

If this is the case at all times with the confidential in- 
tercourse of friends, in times of party violence, there 
must be a thousand things said in letters, which, though 
innocent in themselves, either by rival malice or party 
prejudice, may be turned to a very different construction. 
These letters themselves have been distorted in this 
manner ; and some expressions in them cannot possibly 
be understood, without knowing the correspondent letters 
to which they refer. And when a factious party had got 
possession of the town meetings, and led the Assembly 
into what resolutions they plensed, and were w.itching 
for any pretence to abuse and insult their Governors, 



86 PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 

is it at all to be wondered, that Ihey did not wish to 
have the contents of their letters told to their enemies? 
When we read in these letters such passages as these: 
" If there be no necessity for it, I think it would be best 
it should not be known that this intelligence comes from 
me." Or this : " I have wrote with freedom, in confi- 
dence of my name's not being used on the occasion. For 
though I have wrote nothing but what, in my conscience, 
I think an American may, upon just principles, advance, 
and what a servant of the crown ought, upon ail proper 
occasions, to suggest; yet the many prejudices I have to 
combat with, may render it unfit it should be made pub- 
lic." Or this of Mr. Hutchinson's : " I must beg the 
favor of you to keep secret every thing I write, until we 
are in a more settled state; for the party here, either by 
their Agent, or by some of their emissaries in London, 
have sent them every report or rumor of the contents of 
letters wrote from hence. I hope we shall see better 
times both here and in England." Or this again of Mr. 
Oliver's : "I have tvrote with freedom; I consider I am 
writing to a friend; and that I am perfectly safe in opening 
myself to you!'' Upon reading these passages, which are 
all there are of this kind, a man whose heart was cast in 
the common mould of humanit}^, would have been apt to 
say : These are letters irregularly obtained ; the writers 
desire that every thing they write should be kept secret ; 
they belong to Mr. Whately, who never injured me; I 
will therefore return them to the right owner. Dr. 
Franklin's reasoning is of a very different cast. After 
having just before told us : These are public letters, sent 
to public persons, designed for public purposes, and there- 
fore I have a right to betray them ; he now sa}'S, These 



PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 87 

are letters which the writers desire may be kept secret, 
and therefore I will send them to their enemies. Pre- 
pared on both sides for his rival's overthrow, he makes 
that an argument for doing him hurt, which any other 
man would consider as a principal aggravation of the in- 
justice of it. 

But, if the desiring secresy be the proof, and the mea- 
sure of guilt, what then are we to think of Dr. Franklin's 
case; whose whole conduct in this affair has been secret 
and mysterious ; and who, through the whole course of 
it, has discovered the utmost solicitude to keep it so ? 
My Lords, my accounts say, that when these letters were 
sent over to Boston, so very desirous was Dr. Franklin 
of secresy, that he did not choose to set his name to the 
letter which accompanied them. This anonymous letter 
expressly ordered, that it should be shown to none but 
to a junto of six persons. If the Doctor choose it, 1 
will name the six. The direction of every letter was 
erased, and strict orders were given that they should be 
carefully returned again to London. The manner in 
which they were brought into the Assembly, all showed 
the most earnest desire of concealment. Under these 
mysterious circumstances have the Assembly passed their 
censures ; and voted this Address to his Majesty against 
Mr. Hutchinson and Mr. Oliver, upon account of a parcel 
of letters directed to somebody, they know not whom ; 
and sent from somebody, they know not where. And 
Dr. Franklin now appears before your Lordships, wrapt 
up in impenetrable secres}', to support a charge against 
his Majesty's Governor and Lieutenant Governor; and 
expects that your Lordships should advise the punishing 



88 PROCEEDINGS ON T [IE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAT, 

them, upon account of certain letters, which he will not 
produce, and which he dares not tell how he obtained. 

But the Doctor says, he transmitted them to his con- 
stituents. 

That Dr. Franklin sent these letters to such persons as 
he thought would in some way or other bring; them into 
the Assembly, may be true. And accordingly, after an 
alarm of some dreadful discovery, these letters were pro- 
duced by one single person, pretending to be under an 
injunction to observe the strictest secresy, and to suffer 
no copies to be taken of them. After allowing two or 
three days for fame to amplify, and for party malice to 
exaggerate ; and after having thereby raised a general 
prejudice against the Governor; at length another Mem- 
ber tells the Assembly, that he had received from an un- 
known hand a copy of the letters ; and wished to have 
that copjr compared and authenticated with the originals. 
After this, when they had brought the Council into their 
measures, they then found their powers enlarged ; and 
that they were at liberty to show them to any one, pro- 
vided they did not suffer them to go out of their hands ; 
and the King's Governor and Lieutenant Governor were 
permitted to look upon them only in this opprobrious 
manner, in order to render the indignity so much the 
more offensive. 

This Dr. Franklin may call transmitting the letters to 
his constituents ; and upon those who know nothing of 
the course of these proceedings, may easity impose the 
belief of it. Hut your Lordships will readily see, and 
every man who has been an agent very well knows, that, 
this is not what is meant by transmitting to his constitu- 
ents. ]\Iy Lords, when an agent means to write to the 



PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 89 

Assembly, he addresses his letter to the Speaker, to be 
communicated to the House. And the Doctor knows 
that there are many articles in the Journals of this tenor : 
" A letter from Dr. Franklin to the Speaker, was read." 

But the course taken with these letters was just the 
reverse of this. The letter which came with them was 
anonymous ; though the hand was well known : too well 
perhaps known to the selected few, who only were to be 
allowed the sight of it. Since therefore the Doctor has 
told us that he transmitted these letters to his constitu- 
ents, we know now who they are. His constituents, by 
his own account, must be this particular junto ; for to 
them, and them only, were the letters communicated. Dr. 
Franklin did not communicate them, as their agent, to the 
Assembly ; for whatever may have been the whispers of 
this junto, the Assembly, as an Assembly, does not to 
this day know by whom the letters were sent. And so 
little do these innocent, well-meaning farmers, which com- 
pose the bulk of the Assembly, know what they are 
about, that by the arts of these leaders, they have been 
brought to vote an Address to his Majesty to dismiss his 
Governor and Lieutenant Governor, founded upon certain 
papers, which they have not named ; sent to them from 
somebody, they know not whom ; and originally directed 
to somebody, they cannot tell where : for, my Lords, my 
accounts say, that it did not appear to the House that 
these letters had ever been in London. 

I have pointed out to your Lordships the manner in 
which this conspiracy against the Governor was conducted, 
with all its circumstances, as the letters from Boston re- 
late them. And from this account your Lordships will 
not wonder that I consider Dr. Franklin not so much in 

12 



90 PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 

the light of an agent for the Assembly's purpose, as in 
thai of a first mover and prime conductor of it for his 
own ; not as the Assembly's agent for avenging this 
dreadful conspiracy of Mr. Hutchinson against his native 
country ; but as the actor and secret spring, by which all 
the Assembly's motions were directed : the inventor and 
first planner of the whole contrivance. He it was that 
received and sent away Mr. Whately's letters. By what 
means he laid his hands on them he does not say ; till he 
do, he leaves us at liberty to suppose the worst ; I would 
wish to suggest the best. One case only must be ex- 
cepted ; Dr. Franklin will not add another injury, and 
say to the representative' 41 of the Whately family, that 
they were an} r of them consenting to the perfidy. And 
yet, my Lords, nothing but that consent could put him 
honorably in possession of them, and much less give 
him a right to apply them to so unwarrantable a pur- 
pose. 

My Lords, there is no end of this mischief. I have 
now in my hand an cxpostulatory letter from a Mr. 
Roome, not a native of America, but sent from London to 
Rhode Island, to collect in and sue for large outstanding 
debts there. This poor man, in a familiar letter to a friend 
in the same province, expresses a just indignation at the 
difficulties he met with in executing his trust, from the 
iniquitous tendency of their laws, and of the proceedings 
of their courts, to defraud their English creditors ; and 
then gives him an invitation to come and spend some 
time with him at his country house, and catch perch and 
be of their fishing party. For this letter, the Assembly 

* Mr. Whately intended, if he bad been well enough, to have been at the 
Council. 



PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 91 

brought him under examination, and committed him to 
prison, because he Avould not answer to his printed name 
at the end of one of the letters in this book.* Upon this 
occasion he writes a letter to one of his employers, with 
whom he had served his clerkship here in London, expos- 
tulating on the cruelty and injustice of the executors suf- 
fering their dead brother's papers to be applied to such a 
purpose. For he, my Lords, had no conception that any 
one else could have made this use of letters which did 
not belong to him. Mr. Roome had heard that the Bos- 
ton letters had all been sent back again to London ; and 
knew that their Speaker was directed to procure his 
original letter, in order to their proceeding against him 
still more severely. The merchant here came with this 
letter to a friend of Mr. Whately's, desiring that he 
would go with him to Mr. Whately, and join in entreat- 
ing him not to send back the letter to their Speaker, 
which would oblige him, he writes, either to fly the Pro- 
vince, or else to suffer a long imprisonment. My Lords, 
Mr. Whately's friend had seen too much of the anguish 
of mind under which he had been suffering for the five 
months since this discovery. He knew that it would 
be giving him another stab to suffer a stranger abruptly 
to put this letter into his hands ; he informed the mer- 
chant of the state of the affair, and prevented his going 
to him. 

But what had this poor man done to Dr. Franklin, that 
his letter should be sent back too? Mr. Hutchinson and 
Mr. Oliver were public persons, and their letters, accord- 
ing to the Doctor's new code of morality, may be lawful 
prize. But Mr. Roome's is a name we had never heard 

* The Book of Letters, printed at Boston, then in his hand. 



02 PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 

of. Was he too a man in a public station ? His friend, 
to whom he .sent this invitation to come a fishing with him, 
was he a public person? Could Mr. Roome, when he was 
writing to New London, imagine that he was writing a 
letter to be shown to the King ; and to alienate his affec- 
tions from that loyal people ? Did the sailing of the four 
regiments to Boston depend upon the intelligence of a 
man at Narragansett ? The writer of this letter could 
not have a thought of its producing public measures. 
Surely then the returning of this letter might have been 
omitted ; and this poor man at least might have been 
spared. But all men, be they in public stations or in 
private, be they great or small, all are prey that unfor- 
tunately fall into Dr. Franklin's hands : he wantonly and 
indiscriminately sends back the letters of all ; unfeeling 
of the reflection which must arise in every other breast, 
that what is sport to him may be imprisonment and death 
to them. 

But under all this weight of suspicion, in the full view 
of all the mischievous train of consequences which have 
followed from this treachery, (for such there must be 
somewhere, though Dr. Franklin does not choose to let 
us know where to fix it,) with a whole province set in a 
flame ; with an honest, innocent man thrown into jail, and 
calling on Mr. Whately not to furnish the means of fixing 
him there ; with a worthy family distressed, in the re- 
flections cast on their own character, and in the sufferings 
brought upon their friends and correspondents ; with the 
memory of one brother greatly injured, and the life of 
another greatly endangered ; with all this weight of sus- 
picion, and with all this train of mischiefs before his 
eyes, Dr. Franklin's apathy sets him quite at ease, and 



PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 93 

he would have us think that he has done nothing more 
than what any other Colony Agent would have done. He 
happened only to be the first Colony Agent who laid his 
hands on them, and he thought it his duty to transmit 
them to his constituents. 

My Lords, I have the pleasure of knowing several very 
respectable gentlemen, who have been Colony Agents, and 
cannot but feel a little concern at seeing this strange im- 
putation cast on that character. I have heard the senti- 
ments of some of them. Upon being asked, whether, if 
they had laid their hands upon another gentleman's let- 
ters, they would have thought it their duty to make a 
like use of them : my Lords, they received the proposal 
with horror. One of them said, it was profaning the 
word duty to apply it to such a purpose ; another, that if 
he had been their Agent, he would sooner have cut off 
his right hand than have done such a thing. 

My Lords, Dr. Franklin's mind may have been so 
possessed with the idea of a Great American Republic, 
that he may easily slide into the language of the minister 
of a foreign independent state * A foreign Ambassador 
when residing here, just before the breaking out of a war, 
or upon particular occasions, may bribe a villain to steal 
or betray any state papers ; he is under the command of 
another state, and is not amenable to the laws of the 
country where he resides; and the secure exemption 
from punishment may induce a laxer morality. 

But Dr. Franklin, whatever he ma}'' teach the people 
at Boston, while he is here at least is a subject ; and if a 
subject injure a subject, he is answerable to the law. 

* See also his Letter to Lord Dartmouth. 



94 PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 

And the Court of Chancery will not much .attend to his 
new self-created importance. 

But, my Lords, the rank in which Dr. Franklin appears, 
is not even that of a Province Agent : he moves in a very 
inferior orbit. An agent for a province, your Lordships 
know, is a person chosen by the joint act of the Governor, 
Council, and Assembly ; after which, a commission is is- 
sued by the Secretary, under the province seal, appoint- 
ing him to that office. Such a real Colony Agent, being 
made by the joint concurrence of all the three branches 
of the Government, will think it his duty to consult the 
joint service of all the three ; and to contribute all he 
can to the peace, harmony, and orderly government of 
the whole, as well as to the general welfare and prosperity 
of the province. This at least is what I learn from the 
copy books of two gentlemen, who at different periods 
were Agents for this very Colony. But Dr. Franklin's 
appointment seems to have been made in direct opposi- 
tion to all these. Upon a message from the Council to 
the Assembly, desiring that they would join in the choice 
of an Agent for the Colony, they came to a resolution, 
that they would not join with the honorable Board in the 
choice of such an Agent; but resolved that the}' will 
choose an Agent of their own ; and then, that Dr. Frank- 
lin should be that Agent. My Lords, the party b}' 
whom the Assembly is now directed, did not want a man 
who should think himself bound in duty to consult for 
the peace and harmony of the whole government; they 
had their own private separate views, and they wanted 
an Agent of their own, who should be a willing instru- 
ment and instructor in the accomplishing their own sepa- 
rate purposes. Dr. Franklin, therefore, your Lordships 



PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 95 

see, not only moves in a different orbit from that of other 
Colony Agents, but he gravitates also to a different centre. 
His great point appears to be to serve the interest of his 
party ; and privately to supply the leaders of it with the 
necessary intelligence. Wheresoever and howsoever he 
can lay his hands on them, he thinks it his duty to fur- 
nish materials for dissensions ; to set at variance the dif- 
ferent branches of the Legislature ; and to irritate and 
incense the minds of the King's subjects against the 
King's Governor. 

But, says the Doctor, the tendency of these letters was to 
incense the mother country against her colonies. 

There is a certain steadiness which is singularly re- 
markable in this case. These men are perpetually offer- 
ing every kind of insult to the English nation. Setting 
the King's authority at defiance ; treating the parliament 
as usurpers of an authority not belonging to them, and 
flatly denying the Supreme Jurisdiction of the British 
empire ; and have been publishing their votes and reso- 
lutions for this purpose; and yoit now pretend a great 
concern about these letters, as having a tendency to in- 
cense the parent state against the colony. Not content 
with bidding defiance to our authority, they now offer 
insult to our understanding ; and at the very time while 
they are flying in the King's face, would have him turn 
out his Governor, because he has in the mildest terms in- 
timated his opinion, that they do not pay the reverence 
they used to do, to the British authority. 

My Lords, we are perpetually told of men's incensing 
the mother country against the colonies, of which I have 
never known a single instance. But we hear nothing of 
the vast variety of arts which have been made use of to 



9G PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 

incense the colonies against the mother country. And 
in all these arts no one I fear has been a more successful 
proficient, than the very man, who now stands forth as 
Mr. Hutchinson's accuser. My Lords, as he has been 
pleased in his own letter to avow this accusation, I shall 
now return the charge, and show to your Lordships who 
it is that is the true incendiary, and who is the great 
abettor of that faction at Boston, which, in form of a 
Committee of Correspondence,, have been inflaming the 
whole province against his Majesty's government. 

My Lords, the language of Dr. Franklin's peculiar 
correspondents is very well known. For years past they 
have been boasting of the countenance which he receives 
in England, and the encouragement which he sends over 
to them at Boston. One of their last boasted advices 
was : Go on, abstain from violence, but go on ; for you 
have nothing to fear from the government here. 

My Lords, from the excess of their zeal, these men 
are apt sometimes to let out a little too much. In the 
Boston Gazette of the 20th of September last is a letter, 
understood at Boston to have been written by Mr. Adams, 
one of Dr. Franklin's six constituents,* which ends with 
the following passage : — "The late Agent, .Mr. De Bert, 
in one of his letters wrote, that Lord Hillsborough pro- 
fessed a great regard for the interest of America ; and he 
thought the only thing that could be done to serve us, 
was to Jecrj) the matter of right out of sight. The professed 
design of that minister it seems was to serve us. But 
America has not yet thought it wise to agree to his Lord- 

* This gentleman was the manager of the discovery of Mr. Hutchinson's 
letters in the . Assembly ; as Mr. Bowdoin, another of the six, was in the 

Council. 



PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 07 

ship's political plan, to wink their liberties out of sight, 
for the sake of a temporary accommodation. Dr. 
Franklin, who is perhaps as penetrating a genius as his 
Lordship, extended his views a little farther. ' I hope,' 
says he, in a letter dated in 1771, ' the colony Assem- 
blies will show by repeated resolves, that they know their 
rights, and do not lose sight of them. Our growing import- 
ance will ere long compel an acknowledgment of them, 
and establish and secure them to our 'posterity! And he 
adds, l l purpose to draw up a memorial stating our rights 
and grievances, and in the name and behalf of the pro- 
vince, protesting particularly against the late innovations. 
Whether speedy redress is or is not the consequence, I 
imagine it may be of good use to keep alive our claims, and 
show that we have not given up the contested- points.' 
It seems to have been the judgment of this great man, 
that a state of rights should accompany a complaint of 
grievances; and that decent and manly protests against 
particular innovations, have the surest tendency to an ef- 
effectual, if not a speedy removal of them." * 

Your Lordships will be pleased to observe the time of 
Dr. Franklin's announcing his intention of drawing up 
for them such a memorial, was in 1771. At the proper 
season in the next year, there was produced a great work, 
under these very heads of a State of Rights, and a State 
of Grievances, and Protests against the new Innovations : 
but not from the press in London ; that would not have 
answered the purpose. It was to be a memorial in the 
name and behalf of the province ; and therefore was first 
to be sent thither, and receive the stamp of their author- 
ities. A town meeting therefore was called, and a Com- 

* This Gazette was misplaced during the speech. 
13 



98 PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 

mittee of Correspondence chosen, to draw up a state of 
their rights and grievances, and from the form of the 
resolution it is pretty manifest, that the leaders knew 
already what the work was to be. After an adjournment 
the Committee met, and produced this great twelve-penny 
book, under the very heads of a state of their rights, and 
containing a list of their grievances, with remonstrances 
sufficiently strong against what they call innovations. 
The work was received with the utmost applause, and in- 
stantly converted into votes and resolutions of the town 
of Boston. And doubtless it well deserved it. It is a 
set of ready drawn heads of a declaration for any one 
colony in America, or any one distant county in the 
kingdom, which shall choose to revolt from the British 
empire, and say that they will not be governed by the 
King and Parliament at Westminster. They therefore 
voted that this report of their Committee of Correspon- 
dence should be printed in a pamphlet, and that six hun- 
dred copies of them should be disposed of to the select- 
men of the towns of the province, with an inflammatory 
letter, sounding an alarm of a plan of despotism, with which 
the Administration (and the Parliament) intended to enslave 
them ; and threatened them with certain and inevitable de- 
struction ; and desiring that they would call town-meet- 
ings, and send their votes and resolutions upon this book. 
In sixty or seventy villages or townships such meetings 
had been held, and all express the highest approbation 
of this excellent performance. And well they might; 
for it told them a hundred rights, of which they never 
had heard before, and a hundred grievances which they 
never before had felt. Your Lordships see the votes and 
instructions of these several townships, in the Boston 



PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 99 

gazettes here before me. They are full of the most ex- 
travagant absurdities. Such as the enthusiastic rants of 
the wildest of my countrymen in the days of Charles II. 
cannot equal. It is impossible to read them to your 
Lordships. Those of Pembroke and of Marblehead -are 
particularly curious : but I shall take those of the town 
of Petersham. 

" Resolved, That the Parliament of Great Britain, 
usurping and exercising a legislative authority over, and 
extorting an unrighteous revenue from, these colonies, is 
against all divine and human laws. The late appointment 
of salaries to be paid to our Superior Court Judges, whose 
creation, pay, and commission, depend on mere will and 
pleasure, complete a system of bondage equal to any ever 
before fabricated by the combined efforts of the ingenuity, 
malice, fraud, and wickedness of man. 

" Therefore, Resolved, That it is the first and highest 
social duty of this people, to consider of, and seek ways 
and means for a speedy redress of these mighty griev- 
ances and intolerable wrongs ; and that for the obtain- 
ment of this end, this people are warranted, by the laws 
of God and nature, in the use of every rightful art, and 
energy of policy, stratagem, and force. 

" Therefore, it is our earnest desire, and we here di- 
rect you, to use your utmost influence (as one of the 
legislative bod}^) to convince the nation of Great Britain 
that the measures that they have meted out to us, will 
have a direct tendency to destroy both them and us ; and 
petition the King and Parliament of Great Britain, in the 
most pathetic and striking manner, to relieve us from our 
aggravated grievances ; but if all this should fail, we re- 
commend it to your consideration, and direct you to move 



100 PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 

it to the consideration of the honorable Court, whether 
it would not be best to call in the aid of some Protestant 
poiver or poivcrs, requesting that they would use their kind 
and Christian influence with our mother country, that so 
we- may be relieved, and that brotherly love and harmony 
may again take place." 

These are the lessons taught in Dr. Franklin's school 
of Politics. My Lords, I do not say that Dr. Franklin 
is the original author of this book. But your Lordships 
will give me leave to observe, in the first place, that it is 
not very likely that any of the Doctor's scholars at Bos- 
ton, should attempt to draw up such a state of rights and 
grievances, when the great man, their master, had given 
them notice that he should himself set about such a work; 
and, in the next place, that if the Doctor should not 
choose now to filiate the child, yet the time has been 
when he was not ashamed of it ; for, after it had had its 
operation in America, the Doctor reprinted it here, with 
a preface of his own, and presented it to his friends. 

My Lords, I have said that sixty or seventy of the 
townships had already voted their approbation of the book. 
The evil was catching from town to town (and if the 
greater part could have been engaged, they would have 
forced the rest) when the Governor thought it his duty 
to interpose. He therefore called upon the Assembly to 
disown these undutiful proceedings. Had he only men- 
tioned the disloyalty and evil tendency of them, they 
would probably have passed a few resolutions, and have 
suffered the evil to go on. He was well aware, that the 
Assembly could easily vote themselves as many privileges 
as they pleased, but that it was not so easy to prove their 
right to them. He, therefore, disarmed them of their 



PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 101 

strength in voting, and put them under the necessity of 
proving ; and there he knew they would fail. By open- 
ing the session with that very masterly speech in defence 
of the British-American constitution, he, for a time, 
stunned the faction, and gave a check to the progress 
of their town-meetings. And though the same men were 
in the Assembly created a Committee of Correspondence, 
to write to the Assemblies of the other provinces, yet the 
spirit of the design languished, and but little more was 
then done in it. 

This, my Lords, is the great and principal ground of 
their quarrel with Mr. Hutchinson. They want a Go- 
vernor who shall know less than themselves, whereas he 
makes them feel that he knows more. He stopped the 
train which Dr. Franklin's constituents had laid, to blow 
up the province into a flame, which from thence was to 
have been spread over the other provinces. This was the 
real provocation : and for this they have been seeking for 
some ground of accusation against him. 

After sifting his whole conduct for the four years in 
which he has been Governor, the} r are not able to point 
out a single action to find fault with. Their only re- 
course is to their own surmises of what were the senti- 
ments of his heart five or six years ago. He teas, they 
say, among the instruments in introducing a fleet and army 
into the province. Have they attempted any proof of this ? 
No. But they fancy it from some letters of his, which 
do not say a single word of that sort. Is it possible to 
conceive of a more groundless accusation, or not to see 
their intent in it? 

My Lords, they mean nothing more by this Address, 
than to fix a stigma on the Governor by the accusation. 



102 PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 

Their charge, founded upon a pretence of knowing six 
years ago what were Mr. Hutchinson's thoughts, is not 

really designed for his Majesty in Council. They know 
that your Lordships will not take an accusation for a 
proof; nor condemn without evidence. They never de- 
sired to be brought to a hearing; and therefore the first 
instant when your Lordships call for their proofs, they fly 
oil', and say they do not mean this as a charge, or a trial 
before your Lordships ; and they say truly : they meant 
to bring it before the multitude, and to address the popu- 
lar prejudices. The mob, they know, need only hear 
their Governors accused, and they will be sure to con- 
demn. My Lords, they boast at Boston, that they have 
found this method succeed against their last Governor, 
and they hope to make it do against this ; and by a second 
precedent to establish their power, and make all future 
Governors bow to their authority. They wish to erect 
themselves into a tyranny greater than the Roman : to 
be able, sitting in their own secret cabal, to dictate for 
the Assembly, and send away their vcrbosa ct grandis 
episiola, and get even a virtuous Governor dragged from 
his seat, and made the sport of a Boston mob. 

Having turned out all other Governors, they may at 
length hope to get one of their own. The letters from 
Boston, for two years past, have intimated that Dr. 
Franklin was aiming at Mr. Hutchinson's government. 
It was not easy before this to give credit to such sur- 
mises : but nothing surely but a too eager attention to 
an ambition of this sort, could have betrayed a w r ise man 
into such a conduct as we have now seen. Whether 
these surmises are true or not, your Lordships are much 
the best judges. If they should be true, I hope that 



PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 103 

Mr. Hutchinson will not meet with the less countenance 
from your Lordships, for his rivaVs being his accuser. 
Nor will your Lordships, I trust, from what you have 
heard, advise the having Mr. Hutchinson displaced, in 
order to make room for Dr. Franklin as a successor. 

With regard to his constituents, the factious leaders at 
Boston, who make this complaint against their Governor ; 
if the relating of their evil doings be criminal, and tend- 
ing to alienate his Majesty's affections, must not the doing 
of them be much more so ? Yet now they ask that his 
Majesty will gratify and reward them for doing these 
things ; and that he will punish their Governor fur re- 
lating them, because they are so very bad that it cannot 
but offend his Majesty to hear of them. 

My Lords, if the account given in these letters, of 
their proceedings five years ago, tended to alienate his 
Majesty's affections, has their conduct ever since been in 
any respect more conciliating ? Was it to confute or pre- 
vent the pernicious effect of these letters, that the good. 
men of Boston have lately held their meetings, appointed 
their Committees, and with their usual moderation de- 
stroyed the cargo of three British ships ? If an English 
Consul, in any part of France or Spain, or rather Algiers 
or Tripoli, (for European Powers respect the law of na- 
tions,) had not called this an outrage on his country, he 
would have deserved punishment. But if a Governor at 
Boston should presume to whisper to a friend, that he 
thinks it somewhat more than a moderate exertion of 
English liberty, to destroy the ships of England, to at- 
tack her officers, to plunder their goods, to pull down 
their houses, or even to burn the King's ships of war, he 
ought to be removed ; because such a conduct in him has 



104 PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 

a natural and efficacious tendency to interrupt the harmony 
between Great Britain and the colony, which these good sub- 
jects are striving by such means to establish. 

On the part of Mr. Hutchinson and Mr. Oliver, I am 
instructed to assure }^our Lordships, that the} r feel no 
spark of resentment, even at the individuals who have 
done them this injustice. Their private letters breathe 
nothing but moderation. They are convinced that the 
people, though misled, are innocent. If the conduct of a 
few should provoke a just indignation, they would be the 
most forward, and, I trust, the most efficacious solicitors 
to avert its effects, and to excuse the men. They love 
the soil, the constitution, the people of New England ; 
they look with reverence to this country, and with affec- 
tion to that. For the sake of the people they wish some 
faults corrected, anarchy abolished, and government re- 
established. But these salutary ends they wish to pro- 
mote by the gentlest means ; and the abridging of no 
liberties, which a people can possibly use to its own ad- 
vantage. A restraint from self-destruction is the only 
restraint they desire to be imposed upon New England. 

My Lords, I have said that the letter which accompa- 
nied these in question, was anonymous, and that it was 
directed to be shown to six persons only. 

I am prepared to enter into the proof of this. I call 
upon Dr. Franklin, for my witness. And I am ready to 
examine him. 

N. B. — Dr. Franklin being present, remained silent, 
lm( declared by his counsel that he did not choose to be 
examined. 






PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 105 

The following letter having been mentioned in Mr. 
Wedderburn's Speech, it is printed for the reader's satis- 
faction, and to complete the collection. 

Copy of a Letter returned with those signed Tho. Hutchin- 
son, Andrew Oliver, &c. 

From England. 

Narraganset, Dec. 22, 1767. 

Sir : — I am now withdrawn to my little country villa, 
where, though I am more retired from the busy world, 
yet I am still enveloped with uneasy reflections for a 
turbulent, degenerate, ungrateful continent, and the oppo- 
sition I have met w r ith in my indefatigable endeavors to 
secure our property in this colony, but hitherto without 
success. The times are so corrupted, and the conflict of 
parties so predominant, that motion is blind, or shuts her 
eyes to the most evident truths that cross her designs, 
and believes in any absurdities that assists to accomplish 
her purposes under the prostitution and prostration of an 
infatuated government. Judge then, my dear sir, in what 
a critical situation the fortunes of we poor Europeans 
must be among them. 

We have not been able to recover our property for 
years past, how great soever our exigencies may have 
been, unless we soothed them into a compliance. We are 
unwilling to enter into a litis-contestation with them, be- 
cause the perversion of their iniquitous courts of justice 
are so great, that experience has convinced us we had 
better lose half, to obtain the other quietly, than pursue 
compulsory measures. We are also afraid to apply to a 

British parliament for relief, as none can be effectually 
14 



106 PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 

administered without a change of government, and a 
better administration of justice introduced; and was it 
known here that we made such application home, not only 
our fortunes would be in greater jeopardy, but our lives 
endangered by it before any salutary regulations could 
take place. We are sensible of the goodness of the King 
and Parliament, but how far, or in what space of time 
our grievance, as a few individuals, might weigh against 
the influence of a charter government, we are at a loss to 
determine. 

In 1761, I arrived in America, which circumstance you 
probably remember well. With great industrv, caution 
and circumspection, I have not only reduced our demands, 
and regulated our connections in some measure, but kept 
my head out of a halter which you had the honor to grace. 
(Pray, Doctor, how did it feel ? The subject is stale, 
but I must be a little funny with you on the occasion.) 
Much still remains to be done, and after all my best en- 
deavors, my constituents, from a moderate calculation, 
cannot lose less than £50,000 sterling, by the baneful 
constitution of this colony, and corruption of their courts 
of judicature. It is really a very affecting and melancholy 
consideration. 

Under a deep sense of the infirmities of their constitu- 
tion ; the innovations which they have gradually inter- 
woven among themselves : and stimulated by eveiy act 
of forbearance, lenity, and patience, w ? e have indulged 
our correspondents until deluges of bankruptcies have 
ensued, insolvent acts liberated them from our just de- 
mands, and finally, had our indisputable accounts refused 
admission for our proportion of the small remains, until 
colony creditors were first paid, and the whole absorbed. 



PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 107 

We have had vessels made over to us for the satisfaction 
of debts, and after bills of sales were executed, carried 
off in open violence and force by Capt. Snip-snap of Mr. 
Nobody's appointment, and when we sued him for damages, 
recovered a louse. We have in our turn been sued in our 
absence, and condemned ex parte in large sums for imagi- 
nary damages, for which we can neither obtain atrial, nor 
redress. They refuse us an appeal to the king in council; 
the money must be paid when their executions become 
returnable ; and were we to carry it home by way of 
complaint, it would cost us two or three hundred pounds 
sterling to prosecute, and after all, when his Majesty's 
decrees come over in our favor, and refunding the money 
can no longer be evaded, I expect their effects will be 
secreted, their bodies released by the insolvent act, and 
our money, both principal, interest, and expenses, irre- 
coverably gone. Is not our case grievous ? We have 
in actions, founded upon notes of hand, been cast in their 
courts of judicature. We have appealed to his Majesty 
in council for redress, got their verdicts reversed, and ob- 
tained the king's decrees for our money, but that is all ; 
for although I have had them by me above twelve months, 
and employed two eminent lawyers to enforce them into 
execution, conformable to the colony law, } r et we have 
not been able to recover a single shilling, though we have 
danced after their courts and assemblies above thirty days, 
in vain to accomplish that purpose only. Consider, my 
dear Sir, what expense, vexation, and loss of time this 
must be to us, and whether we have not just cause of 
complaint. 

We have also in vain waited with great impatience for 
years past, in hopes his Majesty would have nominated 



108 PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 

his judges, and other executive officers in every colony 
in America, which would in a great measure have removed 
the cause of our complaint. Nothing can be more neces- 
sary than a speedy regulation in this, and constituting it 
a regal government ; and nothing is of such important 
use to a nation, as that men who excel in wisdom and 
virtue should be encouraged to undertake the business of 
government. But the iniquitous course of their courts 
of justice in this colony deters such men from serving 
the public, or if they do so, unless patronized at home, 
their wisdom and virtue are turned against them with 
such malignity, that it is more safe to be infamous than 
renowned. The principal exception I have met with here, 
is James Helmes, Esq., who was chosen chief justice by 
the General Assembly at last election. He accepted his 
appointment, distinguishes himself by capacity and ap- 
plication, and seems neither afraid nor ashamed to ad- 
minister impartial justice to all, even to the native and 
residing creditors of the mother country. I have known 
him grant them temporary relief by writs of error, &c, 
when both he and they were overruled by the partiality 
of the court ; and in vain, though with great candor and 
force, plead with the rest of the bench, that for the honor 
of the colony, and their own reputation, they ought never 
to pay less regard to the decrees of his Majesty in coun- 
cil, because the property was determined in Great Britain, 
than to their own. I have also heard him with resolution 
and firmness, when he discovered the court to be immode- 
rately partial, order his name to be enrolled, as dissenting 
from the verdict. For such honesty and candor, I am 
persuaded he will be deposed at next election, unless they 
should be still in hopes of making a convert of him. 



PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 109 

I wish it was in nry power to prevent every American 
from suffering for the cause of integrity and their mother 
country ; he, in an especial manner, should not only be 
protected and supported, but appear among the first promo- 
tions. Is there no gentleman of public spirit at home, 
that would be pleased to be an instrument of elevating a 
man of his principles and probity ? Or is it become 
fashionable for vice to be countenanced with impunity, 
and every trace of virtue passed over unnoticed ? God 
forbid ! 

The colonies have originally been wrong founded. 
The}' ought all to have been regal governments, and every 
executive officer appointed by the king. Until that is 
effected, and they are properly regulated, they will never 
be beneficial to themselves, nor good subjects to Great 
Britain. You see with what contempt they already treat 
the acts of parliament for regulating their trade, and 
enter into the most public, illegal, and affronting combi- 
nations to obtain a repeal, by again imposing upon the 
British merchants and manufacturers, and all under the 
cloak of retrenching their expenses by avoiding every unne- 
cessary superfluity. Were that really the case, I am sure 
I would, and also every other British subject, esteem 
them for it ; but the fact is, they obtained a repeal of the 
stamp act by mercantile influence, and they are now en- 
deavoring by the same artifice and finesse to repeal the 
acts of trade, and obtain a total exemption from all taxa- 
tion. Were it otherways, and they sincerely disposed to 
stop the importation of every unnecessary superfluity, 
without affronting the British legislation by their public, 
general, and illegal combinations, they might accomplish 
their purposes with much more decency, and suppress it 



110 PROCEEDINGS ON TEIE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 

more effectually by the acts of their own legislation, im- 
posing such duties upon their importation here,* as might 
either occasion a total prohibition, or confine the consump- 
tion of them to particular individuals that can afford to 
buy, by which measures they would also raise a consider- 
able colon}' Revenue, and ease the poor inhabitants in the 
tax: they now pay. But the temper of the country is 
exceedingly factious, and prone to sedition; they are 
growing more imperious, haughty, nay insolent every day, 
and in a short space, unless wholesome regulations take 
place, the spirit they have enkindled, and the conceptions 
of government they have imbibed, will be more grievous 
to the mother country than ever the ostracism was to the 
Athenians. 

A bridle at present may accomplish more than a rod 
hereafter ; for the malignant poison of the times, like a 
general pestilence, spreads beyond conception ; and if 
the British parliament are too late in their regulations, 
neglect measures seven years, which are essentially ne- 
cessary now, should they then be able to stifle their com- 
motions, it will only be a temporary extinction, conse- 
quentty, every hour's indulgence will answer no other 
purpose than to enable them in a more effectual manner to 
sow seeds of dissension to be rekindled whenever (hey 
are in a capacity to oppose the mother country and render 
themselves independent of her. 

Have they not already in the most public manner shown 
their opposition to the measures of parliament in the affair 
of the late stamp act ? Do not they now with equal 
violence and audacity, in both public papers and conversa- 

* I mean foreign growth or fabrications; but if on British, it would be 
more pardonable than their present system. 



PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. Ill 

tion, declare the parliamentary regulations in their acts of 
trade to be illegal and a mere nullity ? What further 
proofs do we wait for, of either their good or bad dis- 
position ? Did you ever hear of any colonies, in their 
infant state, teach the science of tyranny, reduced into 
rules* over every subject that discountenanced their 
measures in opposition to the mother country, in a more 
imperious manner than they have done these four years past ? 

Have they not made use of every stroke of policy ( in 
their way ) to avail themselves of the dark purposes of 
their independence, and suffered no restraint of conscience, 
or fear, not even the guilt of threatening to excite ct 
civil ivar, and revolt, if not indulged with an unlimited 
trade, without restraint; and British protection, without 
expence ? for that is the engine of it. Is this their true 
or mistaken portrait ? Say. If it is their true one, ought 
not such pernicious maxims of policy — such wicked 
discipline — such ingratitude — such dissimulation — such 
perfidy — such violent, ruthless and sanguinary councils, 
where a Cleon bears rule, and an Aristides cannot be en- 
dured, to be crushed in embryo ? If not, the alternative 
cannot avoid producing such a government, as will ere 
long throw the whole kingdom into the utmost confusion, 
endanger the life, liberty, and property of every good 
subject, and again expose them to the merciless assassi- 
nation of a rabble. 

I am sensible that in all political disputes, especially 
in America, a man may see some things to blame on both 
sides, and so much to fear, which ever} 7- faction should 
conquer, as to be justified in not intermeddling with 
either ; but in matters of such vast importance as the 

* The Committee to the Sons of Liberty, &c. 



112 PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 

present, wherein we have suffered so much — still deeply 
interested, and by which the peace and tranquillity of the 
nation is at stake ; it is difficult to conceal one's emo- 
tions from a friend, and remain a tranquil spectator on a 
theatre of such chicanery and collusion as will inevitably 
(if not checked, and may sooner happen than is imagined 
by many) chill the blood of many a true Briton. 

It may be true policy, in some cases, to tame the 
fiercest spirit of popular liberty, not by blows, or by 
chains, but by soothing her into a willing obedience, and 
making her kiss the veiy hand that restrains her ; but 
such policy would be a very unsuitable potion to cure the 
malady of the present times. They are too much cor- 
rupted, and already so intoxicated with their own 
importance as to make a wrong use of lenient measures. 
They construe them into their own natural rights, and a 
timidity in the mother country. They consider them- 
selves a little bigger than the frog in the fable, and that 
Great Britain can never long grapple with their huge 
territory of 1500 miles frontier, already populous, and 
increasing with such celerity, as to double their numbers 
once in twcntij-five years. This is not perfectly consonant 
with my idea of the matter, though such calculation has 
been made ; and admitting it to be erroneous, yet as 
they believe it, it has the same evil effect, and possesses 
the imaginations of the people with such a degree of in- 
sanity and enthusiasm, as there is hardly anything more 
common than to hear them boast of particular colonies 
that can raise on a short notice an hundred thousand fight- 
ing men to oppose the force of Great Britain ; certain it 
is, that they increase in numbers by emigration, &c, very 
fast, and are become such a body of people, with such 



PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 113 

extensive territory as require every bud of their genius 
and disposition to be narrowly watched and pruned with 
great judgment, otherwise they may become, not only 
troublesome to Great Britain, but enemies to themselves. 
Now is the critical season. They are still like some 
raw, giddy youth just emerging into the world, in a 
corrupt, degenerate age. A parent, or a guardian, is 
therefore still necessary; and if well managed, they 
will soon arrive at such maturity as to become obedient, 
dutiful children ; but if neglected long, the rod of chas- 
tisement will be so much longer necessary as to become 
too burthensome, and must be dropped with the colonies. 
They almost consider themselves as a separate people 
from Great Britain already. 

Last month, while I was attending the General Assem- 
bly, the Governor sent a written message to the lower 
house, importing his intention of a resignation at the 
next election, assigning for reasons, the fumes in the 
colon}' and party spirit were so high, and that bribery 
and corruption were so predominant, that neither life, 
liberty, nor property, were safe, &c, &c, &c. Now, Sir, 
whether the Governor's intentions, as exhibited in this 
open, public declaration was real or feigned, to answer poli- 
tical purposes, it still evinces their decrepid state, the pros- 
titution of government, and melancholy situation of every 
good subject : For it cannot be supposed, by any candid 
inquisitor, that a declaration of that nature and form 
would, if not true, have been delivered by a Governor 
to a whole legislative body in order to emancipate him- 
self. If this truth is granted, and this allowed to be 
their unhappy situation, how much is it the duty of every 

good man, and what language is sufficient to paint, in an 
15 



114 PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAT. 

effectual manner, this internal imbecility of an P^nglish 
colony (in many other respects favorably situated for 
trade and commerce, one of the safest, largest, and most 
commodious harbors in all America, or perhaps in all 
Europe, accessible at all seasons, situated in a fine cli- 
mate, and abounding with fertile soil) to the maternal 
bowels of compassion in order that she ma)' seasonably, 
if she thinks it necessary to interpose, regulate, and wipe 
away their pernicious Charter, rendered obnoxious by the 
abuse of it! 

I am afraid I have tired your patience with a subject 
that must give pain to every impartial friend to Great 
Britain and her colonies. When 1 took up my pen, I 
only intended to have communicated the outlines of such 
of my perplexities (without dipping so far into political 
matter) as I thought would atone for, or excuse my long 
silence, and excite your compassion and advice. 

Our friend Robinson is gone to Boston to join the com- 
missioners. My compliments to Colonel Stuart. May I 
ask the favor of you both to come and eat a Christmas 
dinner with me at Batchelor's hall, and celebrate the fes- 
tivity of the season with me in Narraganset woods. A 
covy of partridges, or bevy of quails, will be entertain- 
ment for the Colonel and me, while the pike and perch 
ponds amuse you. Should business or pre-engagement 
prevent me that pleasure, permit me to ask the favor of 
your earliest intelligence of the proceedings of parlia- 
ment, and of your opinion whether our case is not so 
grievous as to excite their compassion and interposition, 
were it known? This narration, together with your own 
knowledge of many of the facts, and the disposition of 
the colonies in general, will refresh your memory and 



PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 115 

enable you to form a judgment. Relief from home seems 
so tedious, especially to us who have suffered so much, 
like to suffer more, and unacquainted with their reasons 
of delay, that I am quite impatient. 

Above twelve months ago, I received from three gentle- 
men in London (in trust for several others) exemplified, 
accounts for a balance of above twenty-six thousand 
pounds sterling, mostly due from this colony, not .£50 
of which shall I ever be able to recover without compul- 
sive measures, and what is still worse, my lawyer advises 
me from all thoughts of prosecution unless a change of 
government ensues. I am therefore obliged to send them 
his opinion (in justification of my own conduct) in lieu 
of money ten years due. Poor satisfaction! Our con- 
solation must be in a British parliament. Every other 
avenue is rendered impregnable by their subtlety and 
degeneracy, and we can no longer depend upon a people 
who are so unthankful for our indulgences, and the lenity 
of their mother country. I wish you the compliments 
of the approaching season, and a succession of many 
happy new years. 

I am, Sir, with much regard, 

Your most humble Servant, 

GK ROME. 



116 PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY, 



At lite Court at St. James's, the 1th day of February, 1774. 



PRESENT. 



The King's most Excellent Majesty, 



Lord Chancellor, 
Lord President, 
Duke of Queensberry, 
Duke of Ancaster, 
Lord Chamberlain, 
Earl of Suffolk, 
Earl of Denbigh, 
Earl of Sandwich, 
Earl of llochford, 
Earl of Dartmouth, 
Earl of Bristol, 
Earl of Pomfret, 



Viscount Falmouth, 

Viscount Harrington, 

Lord Le Despenser, 

Lord Cathcart, 

Lord Hyde, 

James Stuart Mackenzie, Esq., 

Hans Stanley, Esq., 

George Onslow, Esq., 

Sir Jcffery Amherst, 

Charles Jenkinson, Esq., 

Sir John Goodricke. 



Whereas there was this day read at the Board, a Re- 
port from the Right Honorable the Lords of the Com- 
mittee of Council for Plantation Affairs, dated the 29th 
of last month, in the words following, viz : 

" At the Council Chamber, Whitehall, the 29 th of Jan- 
uary, 1774. 

" By the Right Honorable the Lords of the Committee 
of Council for Plantation Affairs. 



PRESENT. 



Archbishop of Canterbury, 
Lord President, 
Duke of Queensberry, 
Earl of Suffolk, 
Earl of Denbigh, 
Earl of Sandwich, 



Earl of Rochford, 
Earl of Marchmont, 
Earl of Dartmouth, 
Earl of Buckinghamshi 
Earl of Hardwicke, 
Earl of Hillsborough, 



Lord Geo. Sackville Jermain, Dans Stanley, Esq., 



PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 117 

Viscount Townshend, Richard Rigbjs Esq., 

Viscount Falmouth, Sir Eardly Wilmot, 

Lord North, Thomas Townsend, jr., Esq., 

Bishop of London, George Onslow, Esq., 

Lord Le Despencer, George Rice, Esq., 

Lord Cathcart, Lord Chief Justice De Grey, 

Lord Hyde, Sir Lawrence Dundass, 

James Stuart Mackenzie, Esq., Sir Jeffery Amherst, 

General Conway, Sir Thomas Parker, 

"Wellbore Ellis, Esq., Charles Jenkinson, Esq. 

Sir Gilbert Elliott, 

" Your Mnjesty having been pleased by your Order in 
Council of the 10th of last month, to refer unto this Com- 
mittee an Address of the House of Representatives of 
the Province of Massachusetts Bay, complaining of the 
conduct of Thomas Hutchinson, Esq., Governor, and An- 
drew Oliver, Esq., Lieutenant Governor of that Province ; 
and humbly praying that your Majesty would be pleased 
to remove the said Thomas Hutchinson, Esq., and Andrew 
Oliver, Esq., from their posts in that government : the 
Lords of the Committee did, in obedience to your Ma- 
jesty's said order of reference, proceed on the 11th of 
this instant, to take the petition of the said House of 
Representatives into consideration, and were attended by 
Benjamin Franklin, Esquire, styling himself agent for the 
said House of Representatives, (and from whom the said 
petition had been transmitted to the Right Honorable the 
Earl of Dartmouth, one of your Majesty's principal Secre- 
taries of State,) and likewise by Israel Mauduit, Esquire, 
from whom application had been made to this Committee, 
humbty praying on behalf of your Majesty's said Governor 
and Lieutenant Governor, that he might be heard by 
Council in relation to the Address of the House of Repre- 
sentatives of the said province ; and the said Benjamin 



118 PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 

Franklin, Esq., having thereupon prayed, that he might 
in that ease be heard also b} r his Council at a future day: 
the Lords of the Committee did, in compliance with the 
petition of the said Israel Mauduit, Esq., and at the in- 
stance of the said Benjamin Franklin, Esq., think proper 
to ;ippoint a future day to resume the consideration of 
the said petition of the House of Representatives of 
Massachusetts Bay, and to allow Council to be heard on 
both sides thereupon. And their Lordships having been 
this day attended by Council on both sides accordingly, 
and heard all that they had to offer, and having maturely 
weighed and considered the whole of the evidence ad- 
duced by the said Benjamin Franklin, Esq., upon which 
the said House of Representatives did come to the seve- 
ral resolves, which are the foundation of their said peti- 
tion to your Majesty : the Lords of the Committee take 
leave to represent to your Majesty, that the said House 
of Representatives have by their said petition taken upon 
themselves to bring a general charge against your Ma- 
jesty's said Governor and Lieutenant Governor, and to 
complain of their conduct, 'As having a natural and effi- 
cacious tendency to interrupt and alienate the affections 
of your Majesty from that your loyal Province — to de- 
stroy that harmony and good-will between Great Britain 
and that Colony, which every honest subject would strive 
to establish — to excite the resentment of the British ad- 
ministration against that province — to defeat the endea- 
vors of their agents and friends to serve them b} r a fair 
representation of their state of facts — to prevent their 
humble and repeated petitions from reaching the ear of 
your Majesty, or having their desired effect ; and finally 



PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 119 

charging your Majesty's said Governor and Lieutenant 
Governor with having been among the chief instruments 
of introducing a fleet and an army into that province, to 
establish and perpetuate their plans ; whereby your Ma- 
jesty's said Governor and Lieutenant Governor have been 
not only greatly instrumental of disturbing the peace and 
harmony of the government, and causing unnatural and 
hateful discords and animosities between the several parts 
of your Majesty's extensive dominions ; but are justly 
chargeable with all that corruption of morals, and all that 
confusion, misery, and bloodshed, which have been the 
natural effects of posting an army in a populous town.' 
But the Lords of the Committee cannot but express their 
astonishment, that a charge of so serious and extensive a 
nature against the persons whom the said House of 
Representatives acknowledge by their said petition to 
have heretofore had the confidence and esteem of the 
people, and to havebeen advanced by your Majesty from 
the purest motives of rendering your subjects happy, to 
the highest places of trust and authority in that province, 
should have no other evidence to support it but inflam- 
matory and precipitate resolutions, founded only on cer- 
tain letters, written respectively by them (and all but 
one before they were appointed to the posts they now 
hold) in the years 1767, 1768, and 1769, to a gentleman 
then in no office under the government, in the course of 
familiar correspondence, and in the confidence of private 
friendship, and which it was said (and it was not denied 
by Mr. Franklin) were surreptitiously obtained after his 
death, and sent over to America, and laid before the As- 
sembly of the Massachusetts Bay; and which letters 



120 PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS DAY. 

appear to us to contain nothing- reprehensible or unworthy 
of the situation they were in ; and we presume, that it 
was from this impropriety, that the Council did disclaim 
on behalf of the Assembly any intention of bringing a 
criminal charge against the Governor and Lieutenant 
Governor ; but said that the petition was founded 
solely on the ground of the Governor and Lieutenant 
Governor being, as they alleged, now become obnox- 
ious to the people of the province; and that it was 
in this light only that the said petition was presented 
to your Majesty. And there being no other evidence 
now produced, than the said resolutions • and letters, 
together with resolutions of a similar import by the Coun- 
cil of the said province, founded, as it was said, on the 
same letters — 

" The Lords of the Committee do agree humbly to re- 
port, as their opinion to your Majesty, that the said pe- 
tition is founded upon resolutions, formed upon false and 
erroneous allegations, and that the same is groundless, 
vexatious, and scandalous, and calculated only for the 
seditious purposes of keeping up a spirit of clamor and 
discontent in the said province. And the Lords of the 
Committee do further humbly report to your Majesty, 
that nothing has been laid before them, which does or 
can, in their opinion, in any manner or in airy degree, 
impeach the honor, integrity, or conduct of the said Go- 
vernor or Lieutenant Governor ; and their Lordships are 
humbly of opinion, that the said petition ought to be 
dismissed." 

His Majesty taking the said report into consideration, 
was pleased, with the advice of his Privy Council, to ap- 
prove thereof j and to order, that the said petition of the 



PROCEEDINGS ON THE ADDRESS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 121 

House of Representatives of the province of the Massa- 
chusetts Bay, be, and it is hereby dismissed this Board, 
as groundless, vexatious, and scandalous, and calculated 
only for the seditious purpose of keeping up a spirit of 
clamor and discontent in the said province. 

G. ClIETWYND. 



16 



THE 



SPEECH 



OF THE RIGHT HONORABLE 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM, &C. 



My Lords : — After more than six weeks' possession of 
the papers now before you, on a subject so momentous, 
at a time when the state of this nation hangs on every 
hour ; the Ministry have at length condescended to submit 
to the consideration of the House intelligence from Ame- 
rica, with which your Lordships and the public have been 
long and fully acquainted. 

The measures of last year, my Lords, which have pro- 
duced the present alarming state of America, were 
founded upon misrepresentation — they were violent, pre- 
cipitate, and vindictive. The nation was told that it was 
only a faction in Boston, which opposed all lawful govern- 
ment ; that an unwarrantable injury had been done to 
private property, for which the justice of Parliament was 
called upon, to order reparation ; that the least appear- 
ance of firmness would awe the Americans into submis- 
sion, and upon only passing the Rubicon, we should be, 
sine clade victor. 

(122) 



SPEECH OF THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 123 

That the people might choose their Representatives 
under the impression of those misrepresentations, the 
Parliament was precipitately dissolved. Thus the nation 
was to be rendered instrumental in executing the ven- 
geance of Administration on that injured, unhappy, tra- 
duced people. 

But now, my Lords, we find, that instead of suppres- 
sing the opposition of the faction at Boston, these mea- 
sures have spread it over the whole continent. They 
have united that whole people by the most indissoluble 
of all bands — intolerable wrongs. The just retribution 
is an indiscriminate, unmerciful proscription of the inno- 
cent with the guilty, unheard and untried. The blood- 
less victory is an impotent general with his dishonored 
army, trusting solely to the pick-axe and the spade, for 
security against the just indignation of an injured and 
insulted people. 

My Lords, I am happy that a relaxation of my infirmi- 
ties permits me to seize this earliest opportunity of offer- 
ing my poor advice to save this unhappy country, at this 
moment tottering to its ruin. But, as I have not the 
honor of access to his Majesty, I will endeavor to trans- 
mit to him through the constitutional channel of this 
House, my ideas on American business, to rescue him 
from the misadvice of his present Ministers. I congratu- 
late 3'our Lordships, that that business is at last entered 
upon, by the noble Lord's (Lord Dartmouth) laying the 
papers before you. As I suppose your Lordships are too 
well apprised of their contents, I hope I am not prema- 
ture in submitting to you my present motion, [reads the 
motion] ; I wish my Lords not to lose a day in this urging 
present crisis : an hour now lost in allaying the ferment 



124 SPEECH OF THE EAllL OF CHATHAM. 

in America, may produce years of calamity ; but for my 
own part, I will not desert for a moment the conduct of 
this mighty business from the first to the last, unless 
nailed to my bed by the extremity of sickness ; 1 will 
give it unremitting attention : I will knock at the door of 
this sleeping, or confounded Ministry, and will rouse 
them to a sense of their important danger. When I 
state the importance of the colonies to this country, and. 
the magnitude of danger hanging over this country from 
the present plan of misad ministration practiced against 
them, I desire not to be understood to argue for a reci- 
procity of indulgence between England and America : I 
contend not for indulgence, but justice, to America ; and 
I shall ever contend that the Americans justly owe obe- 
dience to us, in a limited degree ; they owe obedience to 
our ordinances of trade and navigation ; but let the line 
be skilfully drawn between the objects of those ordi- 
nances, and their private, internal property : let the 
sacredness of their property remain inviolate; let it be 
taxable only by their own consent, given in their provin- 
cial assemblies, else it will cease to be property. As to 
the metaphysical refinements attempting to show that the 
Americans are equally free from obedience to commercial 
restraints, as from taxation for revenue, as being unre- 
presented here, I pronounce them futile, frivolous, and 
groundless. Property is, in its nature, single as an atom. 
It is indivisible, can belong to one only, and cannot be 
touched but by his consent. The law that attempts to 
alter this disposal of it annihilates it. 

When I urge this measure of recalling the troops from 
Boston, I urge it on this pressing principle — that it is 
necessarily preparatory to the restoration of your peace, 



SPEECH OF THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 125 

and the re-establishment of your prosperity. It will then 
appear that you are disposed to treat amicably and equit- 
ably, and to consider, revise, and repeal, if it should be 
found necessary, as I affirm it will, those violent acts and 
declarations which have disseminated confusion through- 
out your empire. Resistance to your acts was as necessary 
as it was just; and your vain declarations of the omnipo- 
tence of Parliament, and your imperious doctrines of the 
necessity of submission, will be found equally impotent 
to convince or enslave your fellow-subjects in America, 
who feel that tyranny, whether ambitioned b}' an indi- 
vidual part of the Legislature, or by the bodies which 
compose it, is equally intolerable to British principles. 

As to the means of enforcing this thraldom, they are 
found to be as ridiculous and weak in practice, as they 
were unjust in principle. Indeed I cannot but feel with 
the most anxious sensibility, for the situation of General 
Gage and the troops under his command ; thinking him, 
as I do, a man of humanity and understanding, and en- 
tertaining, as I ever shall, the highest respect, the warmest 
love, for the British troops. Their situation is truly 
unworthy, pent up, pining in inglorious inactivity. They 
are an army of impotence. You may call them an army 
of safety and of guard ; but they are in truth an army of 
impotence and contempt — and to render the folly equal 
to the disgrace, they are an army of irritation. I do not 
mean to censure the inactivity of the troops. It is a pru- 
dent and a necessary inaction. But it is a miserable 
condition, where disgrace is prudence ; and where it is 
necessary to be contemptible. This tameness, however 
disgraceful, ought not to be blamed, as I am surprised to 
hear is done by these Ministers. The first drop of blood, 



126 SPEECH OF THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

shed in a civil and unnatural war, would be an immcdica- 
hilc vuhms. It would entail hatred and contention be- 
tween the two people, from generation to generation. 
Woe be to him who sheds the first — the unexpiable — 
drop of blood in an impious war, with a people contend- 
ing in the great cause of public liberty. 1 will tell you 
plainly, my Lords, no son of mine, nor any one over 
whom I have influence, shall ever draw his sword upon 
his fellow subjects. 

I therefore urge and conjure your Lordships immedi- 
ately to adopt this conciliatory measure. I will pledge 
myself for its immediately producing conciliatory effects, 
from its being well timed. But if you delay till your 
vain hope of triumphantly dictating the terms shall be 
accomplished, you delay forever. And even admitting 
that this hope, which in truth is desperate, should be ac- 
complished, what will you gain by a victorious imposition 
of amity ? You will be untrusted and unthanked. Adopt 
then the grace, while you have the opportunity of recon- 
cilement, or at least prepare the way ; allay the ferment 
prevailing in America, by removing the obnoxious hostile 
cause. Obnoxious and unserviceable ; for their merit 
can be only inaction. " Non dimicare est vincere." 
Their victory can never be by exertions. Their force 
would be most disproportionately exerted, against a brave, 
generous, and united people ; with arms in their hands 
and courage in their hearts ; three millions of people, the 
genuine descendants of a valiant and pious ancestry, 
driven to these deserts by the narrow maxims of a su- 
perstitious tyranny. And is the spirit of tyrannous per- 
secution never to be appeased ? Are the brave sons of 
those brave forefathers to inherit their sufferings, as they 



SPEECH OP THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 127 

have inherited their virtues ? Are they to sustain the 
inflictions of the most oppressive and unexampled se- 
verity, beyond the accounts of history or the description 
of poetry? " Rhadamanthus habet durissima regna, 
Castigatque auditque" So says the wisest statesman and 
politician. But the Bostonians have been condemned un- 
heard. The indiscriminating hand of vengeance has 
lumped together innocent and guilty : with all the for- 
malities of hostility, has blocked up the town, and re- 
duced to beggary and famine 30,000 inhabitants. But 
his Majesty is advised that the union of America cannot 
last. Ministers have more eyes than I, and should have 
more ears, but from all the information I have been able 
to procure, I can pronounce it a union solid, permanent, 
and effectual. Ministers may satisfy themselves and de- 
lude the public with the reports of what the} r call com- 
mercial bodies in America. They are not commercial. 
They are your packers and factors ; they live upon nothing, 
for I call commission nothing ; I mean the ministerial 
authority for their American intelligence — the runners 
of government, who are paid for their intelligence. But 
these are not the men, nor this the influence to be con- 
sidered in America, when we estimate the firmness of 
their union. Even to extend the question, and to take 
in the really mercantile circle, will be totally inadequate 
to the consideration. Trade indeed increases the wealth 
and glory of a country ; but its real strength and stamina 
are to be looked for among the cultivators of the land. 
In their simplicity of life is found the simplicity of vir- 
tue, the integrity and courage of freedom. Those true 
genuine sons of the earth are invincible ; and they sur- 
round and hern in the mercantile bodies ; even if those 



128 SPEECH OF THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

bodies, which supposition I totally disclaim, could be sup- 
posed disaffected to the cause of liberty. Of this general 
spirit existing in the American nation, for so I wish to 
distinguish the real and genuine Americans from the 
pseudo-traders I have described : of this spirit of inde- 
pendence animating the nation of America, I have the 
most authentic information. It is not new among them; 
it is, and ever has been, their established principle, their 
confirmed persuasion ; it is their nature and their doc- 
trine. I remember some years ago when the repeal of 
the Stamp Act was in agitation, conversing in a friendly 
confidence with a person of undoubted respect and authen- 
ticity on this subject; and he assured me with a certainty 
which his judgment and opportunity gave him, that these 
were the prevalent and steady principles of America : 
that 3' , ou might destroy their towns, and cut them off 
from the superfluities, perhaps the conveniences of life, 
but that the} r were prepared to despise 3'our power, and 
would not lament their loss, w T hilst they had — zvhat, my 
Lords ? — their woods and liberty. The name of nry au- 
thority, if I am called upon, will authenticate the opinion 
irrefragably. 

If illegal violences have been, as it is said, committed 
in America, prepare the way, open a door of possibility, 
for acknowledgment and satisfaction. But proceed not 
to such coercion, such proscription: cease your indis- 
criminate inflictions, amerce not thirty thousand, oppress 
not three millions, for the faults of forty or fifty. Such 
severity of injustice must forever render incurable the 
wounds you have already given } r our Colonies ; you irri- 
tate them to unappeasable rancor. What though you 
march from town to town, and from province to province? 



SPEECH OF THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 129 

Though you should be able to force a temporary and local 
submission, which I only suppose, not admit, how shall 
3'ou be able to secure the obedience of the country you 
leave behind you in your progress ? To grasp the do- 
minion of 1800 miles of continent, populous in valor, 
liberty, and resistance ? This resistance to your arbitrary 
system of taxation might have been foreseen ; it was ob- 
vious from the nature of things and of mankind ; and 
above all, from the Whiggish spirit flourishing in that 
country. The spirit which now resists your taxation in 
America, is the same which formerly opposed, and with 
success opposed, loans, benevolences, and ship-money in 
England — the same spirit which called all England on its 
legs, and by the Bill of Rights vindicated the English 
Constitution — the same spirit which established the great 
fundamental and essential maxim of your liberties, that 
no subject shall be taxed, but by Ms own consent. If your 
Lordships will turn to the politics of those times, you will 
see the attempts of the Lords to poison this inestimable 
benefit of the Bill, by an insidious proviso : you will see 
their attempts defeated, in their conference with the Com- 
mons, by the decisive arguments of the ascertainers and 
maintainers of our liberty : you will see the thin, incon- 
clusive, and fallacious stuff of those enemies to freedom, 
contrasted with the sound and solid reasoning of Serjeant 
Glanville and the rest, those great and learned men who 
adorned and enlightened this country, and placed her se- 
curity on the summit of justice and freedom. And 
whilst I am on my legs, and thus do justice to the memory 
of those great men, I must also justify the merit of the 
living by declaring my firm and fixed opinion, that such 
a man exists this day, [looking towards Lord Camden]. 



130 srEEcn of the earl of Chatham. 

This glorious spirit of Whiggism animates three millions 
in America, who prefer poverty with liberty, to golden 
chains and sordid affluence ; and who will die in defence 
of their rights, as men — as freemen. What shall oppose 
this spirit, aided by the congenial flame glowing in the 
breast of every Whig in England, to the amount, I hope, 
of at least double the American numbers ? Ireland they 
have to a man. In that country, joined as it is with the 
cause of the Colonies, and placed at their head, the dis- 
tinction I contend for, is and must be observed. This 
country superintends and controls their trade and naviga- 
tion ; but they tax themselves. And this distinction be- 
tween external and internal control, is sacred and insur- 
mountable ; it is involved in the abstract nature of things. 
Property is private, individual, absolute. Trade is an 
extended and complicated consideration ; it reaches as 
far as ships can sail, or winds can blow. It is a great 
and various machine. To regulate the numberless move- 
ments of its several parts, and combine them into effect 
for the good of the whole, requires the superintending 
wisdom and energy of the supreme power in the empire. 
But this supreme power has no effect towards internal 
taxation, for it does not exist in that relation. There is 
no such thing, no such idea in this Constitution, as a su- 
preme power operating upon property. 

Let this distinction then remain forever ascertained. 
Taxation is theirs, commercial regulation is ours. As an 
American, I would recognize to England her supreme 
right of regulating commerce and navigation. As an 
Englishman by birth and principle, I recognize to the 
Americans their supreme unalienable right in their pro- 
pert}'' ; a right which they are justified in the defence of, 



SPEECH OF THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 131 

to the last extremity. To maintain this principle is the 
common cause of the Whigs on the other side of the At- 
lantic, and on this. 'Tis liberty, to liberty engaged, that 
they will defend themselves, their families, and their 
country. In this great cause they are immovably allied. 
It is the alliance of God and nature — immutable, eternal, 
fixed as the firmament of heaven ! To such united force, 
what force shall be opposed ? What, my Lords ; a few 
regiments in America, and seventeen or eighteen thousand 
men at home ! The idea is too ridiculous to take up a 
moment of your Lordships' time ; nor can such a national 
principled union be resisted by the tricks of office or minis- 
terial manoeuvres. Laying papers on your tables, or 
counting noses on a division, will not avert or postpone 
the hour of danger. It must arrive, my Lords, unless 
these fatal acts are done away ; it must arrive in all its 
horrors : and then these boastful Ministers, 'spite of all 
their confidence and all their manoeuvres, shall be forced 
to hide their heads. But it is not repealing this Act of 
Parliament, or that Act of Parliament, — it is not repeal- 
ing a piece of parchment that can restore America to your 
bosom. You must repeal her fears and her resentments, 
and you may then hope for her love and gratitude. But 
now insulted with an armed force posted in Boston, irri- 
tated with an hostile array before her eyes, her conces- 
sions, if you could force them, would be suspicious and 
insecure : they will be irato ammo : they will not be the 
sound, honorable pactions of freemen : they will be the 
dictates of fear and the extortions of force. But it is 
more than evident that you cannot force them, principled 
and united as they are, to your unworthy terms of sub- 
mission. It is impossible. And when I hear General 



132 SPEECH OF THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

Gage censured for inactivity, I must retort with indigna- 
tion on those whose intemperate measures and improvi- 
dent councils have betrayed him into his present situa- 
tion. His situation reminds me, my Lords, of the answer 
of a French General in the civil wars of France, Mon- 
sieur Turenne, I think. The Queen said to him with 
some peevishness, " I observe that you were often very 
near the Prince during the campaign, why did you not 
take him ?" The Mareschal replied with great coolness, 
"J' avois grand peur, qui Monsieur le Prince ne me 
pris," — I was very much afraid the Prince w 7 ould take 
me. 

When youv Lordships look at the papers transmitted 
us from America, when you consider their decency, firm- 
ness, and wisdom, you cannot but respect their cause, and 
wish to make it your own. For myself I must declare and 
avow that in all my reading and observation, and it has 
been my favorite study — I have read Thucydides, and 
have studied and admired the master states of the world, 
— that for solidity and reasoning, force of sagacity, and 
wisdom of conclusion, under such a complication of dif- 
ferent circumstances, no nation or body of men can stand 
in preference to the general Congress at Philadelphia. I 
trust it is obvious to your Lordships, that all attempts to 
impose servitude on such men, to establish despotism over 
such a mighty continental nation — must be vain — must 
be fatal. We shall be forced ultimately to retract, whilst 
we can, not when w r e must. I say we must necessarily 
undo these violent and oppressive acts : — they must be 
repealed — you will repeal them : I pledge myself for it 
you will in the end repeal them : I stake my reputation 



SPEECH OF THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 133 

on it : I will consent to be taken for an idiot if they are 
not finally repealed. Avoid then this humiliating, dis- 
graceful necessity. With a dignity becoming your ex- 
alted situation, make the first advances to concord, to 
peace and happiness, for that is your true dignity, to act 
with prudence and with justice. That you should first 
concede is obvious from sound and rational policy. Con- 
cession comes with better grace and more salutary eifect 
from the superior power. It reconciles superiority of 
power with the feelings of men ; and establishes solid 
confidence in the foundation of affection and gratitude. 
So thought the wisest poet and perhaps the wisest man 
in political sagacity, the friend of Maecenas, and the eulo- 
gist of Augustus. To him, the adopted son and successor 
of the first Caesar — to him, the master of the world, he 
wisely urged this conduct of prudence and dignity. 

Tuque prior, &c. Virgil. 

Every motive therefore of justice and of policy, of 
dignity and of prudence, urges you to allay the ferment 
in America, by a removal of your troops from Boston, 
by a repeal of your Acts of Parliament, and by demon- 
stration of amicable dispositions towards your Colonies. 
On the other hand, every danger and every hazard im- 
pend to deter you from perseverance in your present 
ruinous measures : foreign war hanging over your heads 
by a slight and brittle thread : France and Spain watch- 
ing your conduct, and waiting for the maturity of your 
errors ; with a vigilant eye to America and the temper of 
your Colonies, more than to their own concerns, be they 
what they may. 



134 



SPEECH OF THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 



To conclude, my Lords, if the Ministers thus perse- 
vere in misadvising and misleading the King, I will not 
say that they can alienate his subjects from his crown, 
but I will affirm that they will make the crown not worth 
his wearing : I shall not say that the King is betrayed, 
but I will pronounce that the kingdom is undone. 




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